


Preying On You Tonight

by ruff_ethereal



Category: RWBY
Genre: Attempted Murder, Discrimination, F/F, Fantastic Racism, Faunus!Coco, Gen, Hate Crimes, Implied/Referenced Self-Harm, Internalized racism, Non-Explicit Sex, Original Character(s), Racism, Self-Esteem Issues, Violence
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-08-16
Updated: 2016-01-17
Packaged: 2018-04-15 00:26:35
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 17
Words: 40,978
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4586010
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ruff_ethereal/pseuds/ruff_ethereal
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It was all a series of little gaffs—the lies, the hiding, the excuses—all leading up to one gigantic mistake that ruined my entire life as I knew it. One didn't just recover from an attempted murder on another student in full view of almost all of Beacon, after all.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Warning: This fic contains vast amounts of racism, hate crimes, discrimination, violence based on racism and discrimination, derogatory and racist remarks, internalized racism, self-loathing, body insecurity, attempted murder, violence, mentions of sexual assault, sex, and a whole lotta Drama.
> 
> The author went to a dark, dark, dark place with this fic, believe you me.
> 
> (Permanent Hiatus)

It was all a series of little gaffs—the lies, the hiding, the excuses—all leading up to one gigantic mistake that ruined my entire life as I knew it. One didn't just recover from an attempted murder on another student in full view of almost all of Beacon, after all.

I heard a familiar panicked squeak. The haze of red quickly left my eyes, and I could see clearly again.

I looked down at Cardin, and saw not a hint of teasing or sadism on him, only shock and fear.

I looked around me, and saw the other students in the cafeteria looking back at me with mixed expressions, some shocked, some scared, some amazed—except for my teammates, Fox and Yatsuhashi. They looked on with something closer to “disappointment.”

I noticed some of them were recording the incident with their scrolls, as if the sheer number of eyewitness and the cafeteria's surveillance footage wasn't damning evidence enough.

I looked around for Velvet, but she was long gone. True to _her_ instincts, she ran and hid as fast as she could.

In the end, I figured there really was no one to blame except myself.

After all, this was all _my_ idea.

* * *

_Two years ago..._

Professor Ozpin raised his eyebrows. “Ms. Adel, I assure you my school is perfectly safe, accepting, and actively protective of _all_ of our students.”

“I know that,” I calmly replied, “but I'd still very much appreciate it if you could grant me my request.”

Professor Ozpin nodded. “Would it be out of league of me to ask _why,_ exactly? It's not every day I have to approve something so… unorthodox such as this.”

I frowned. “… It's for personal reasons.” I mumbled. “I really think it won't do me much good, letting people know the truth after all these years.”

“Pardon my words and any unintended offense, Ms. Adel, but this is _Beacon Academy_ you are about to enroll in; I do believe people are going to be more interested in how well you can fight, more than what or who you are.”

I bit back a harsher response, as I was trained to. “I politely disagree, Professor Ozpin.” I said instead.

Professor Ozpin looked at me with an unreadable expression, before he shrugged. “Very well, then; Beacon is nothing but flexible and adaptive to our students' needs, within reason. Excepting your most secure and sensitive records, consider your request granted.

“Please be aware that is about as far as we shall go, Ms. Adel; we will not be responsible for any unforeseen incidents brought about by third parties, the actions of the students, or that of your own.”

I nodded. “Fair enough. Thank you for understanding, Professor Ozpin.” I smiled.

Professor Ozpin politely smiled back. “You are welcome, Ms. Adel. I sincerely hope you will enjoy your time here in Beacon.”

“I'm sure I shall.” I replied, before making with the farewell niceties, and shutting off the scroll feed. When I was sure Professor Ozpin wasn't going to call me back for any last minute clarification, I sighed, and looked up at the ceiling of my room.

On the one hand, there was no need to compromise my plans of becoming a Huntress and attending Beacon Academy.

On the other, now there really _was_ no going back.

Once again, I resolved to go through with this plan till the very end; backing out when I had already gone this far would be a _huge_ waste of time and resources. It'd also mean another defeat to chalk up to cowardice, and I'd had enough of those. I looked at my face in the mirror, reminded myself of who I was—the real me, the one I had spent so many years hiding from the world. I grinned, a fresh surge of confidence running through my system.

“I can do this.” I said to myself. “I _will_ do this.”

That fact I'd still _still_ be hiding said real me from the world wasn't lost on me, but I chose to ignore it for now. “You heard Ozpin,” I said to my reflection. “They're going to care more about how well you can fight rather than who or what you are.”

It was all a great big lie, I knew that, but I chose to ignore that, too—I needed all the help I could get if this was going to work.

* * *

“Dress well, move with confidence, and always hold your head up high,” mother always told me. “The predators of the world do not prey on the strong.”

So it was that I set off for my first day in Beacon in one of my best outfits, a creation of my mother's specifically for me. I walked with purpose, I showed no signs of reluctance, confusion, or nervousness, and most importantly, I initiated no conversation or interaction with anyone beyond what was necessary and polite.

Most every single one of my fellow students were happy to ignore me after I made it clear I wasn't interested in talking; they bid farewell or just flat-out ignored and me found someone else, making friends without me. I didn't really worry about the wasted opportunities or thought that I was making a big mistake; aside from the inevitable fact that most of these friendships would drift apart or break up within the first week if not the next day, my standards for friends were very different from theirs.

For most, the flight from home to Beacon Academy would have been boring and unbearable without anyone to talk to, but fortunately for me, I was never the kind to crave or need much social interaction in the first place.

There were a few unavoidable, persistent, and overly curious people, of course. They asked me about my clothes. “Adel--my mother's own designs, like everything else I wear.” I replied. They asked me about where I came from. “Vale.” was all I gave them. They asked about my weapon, currently in its compacted “purse” form. “It's a commissioned piece, made to order.” I explained, followed by the names of the hands and heads that collaborated to make it, as was respectful.

With that last question, a few students gave me dirty, confused, or disappointed looks—Signal graduates, I figured from the prominent holstering, the personalization on, and the designs of their weapons. I didn't mind; In the end, I valued my weapon's quality and ability to keep me safe than any sort of pride or bragging rights to having forged or designed it with my own hands.

My airship docked, students started moving towards the exits even before the ramps extended out. Cheers, woops, and excited chatter started anew, but still I kept quiet, waiting by the sides and away from the crush of bodies trying to get back to solid ground and to their new school as soon as possible. Eventually the PA system told us to please disembark, the airships had other places to be. I walked out alongside the students who had gotten cold feet and those that waited out the crush like I did. Most would head straight towards the school, or stand at the edge and gawk at the architecture, but I had more important matter to attend to:

My luggage.

The staff and student volunteers had long run out, or were still busy helping other students move their things in, meaning I was hauling in everything by myself. I set my purse down on a trolley, looked at the stack of suitcases and the rack of meticulously, carefully stored and packaged dresses, and tried to figure out which I needed to get inside first so I wouldn't lose anything _too_ valuable if someone decided to nick a few of my belongings.

... Or worse yet, they'd see some of the things I'd rather keep hidden.

“Need some help?” Someone asked.

I turned to the voice. Then I looked up, till I could finally see the face of the giant before me.

He gave of the aura of a highly trained guard animal, a war elephant, or a disciple of some secretive religious order of warriors. He had an intimidating, massive build, clearly defined and well-developed musculature, alongside scars and rough, hardened skin, all signs that he was no stranger to manual labour, intense training, and actual combat.

Yet he also felt harmless, friendly, the kind of person that wouldn't hurt a fly… provided you stayed on his good side, and more importantly, that of his allies.

“No thank you;” I replied. “I can handle this by myself.”

“You sure?”

_“Yes.”_

He nodded in understanding. “Okay. My name is Daichi Yatsuhashi, by the way.” He extended one massive hand.

“Coco. Coco Adel.” I replied as I placed my own hand in his palm.

His hand was large enough to completely cover my own. His grip was firm, yet far from feeling like he was about to crush my bones. His shake was steady, controlled, and careful, a sign that he knew that he could have broken my entire hand and arm right there and then if he wanted to, but wouldn't.

“You can tell a lot from just a handshake,” daddy said, and once more, I found no reason to question him.

We bade farewell, and Yatsuhashi left to go find someone else that might need or want his assistance.

I made a note of him, the first new face I'd cared to remember. He struck me as someone you could trust, someone who had little prejudices and a wealth of understanding and patience, and someone you knew could crush almost anything or anyone that had earned his ire.

Then, I turned back to my luggage, and started rearranging it.

I risked looks back at the bags and clothes I'd left behind as I hauled my things in, make sure they were still there on the tarmac, untouched and unopened. I couldn't help but notice the student Yatsuhashi ended up helping—someone who would have been almost invisible, if not for her rather large bunny ears and the fact that she was standing close to Yatsuhashi.

A Faunus, I realized.

There was a part of me that told me I should remember her face, too, and get to know her, but I ignored it. History had given me enough evidence that it was _not_ a good idea.

* * *

The rest of my first day passed without incident. I sat through Ozpin's welcoming speech and Glynda Goodwitch's reminder that though the mood may have been light, our purpose was deadly serious, and while Beacon may not be some form of hell-hole filled with horrific torture, grueling training, and punishments galore, it wasn't the place to just hang out with your friends and party all the time, until we were dismissed and free to go about wherever we pleased.

There were “group bonding” and “getting to know each other” activities being held all over the campus, and the school also offered as alternatives group or individual campus tours, directions to the library, or to places where one might be able to find some peace and quiet, but I stood by the sidelines the whole time, just silently observing what happened, who was who, and learning about the power structures, cliques, and pecking orders already forming.

I didn't really notice anything significantly worrying, but I reminded myself this was only temporary—people were still riding a novelty high, there was that feeling of unity as freshmen on their first day, and some problems took time to incubate and develop before they revealed themselves.

The hours passed, the day grew late, and all the students were shuffled into one of the massive function halls. We all wore pajamas and held sleeping bags in our arms, the whole area cleared so we could sleep on the floor. Unlike this morning, I staked out my spot as soon as I could, elbowing, pushing, and jabbing others if I needed to, wordlessly telling people it would do them well to get out of my way and find a different spot to lay your head on.

There were complaints, angry accusations, and dirty looks as I set my sleeping bag down, but I ignored them all. Besides, the offense was quickly forgotten as good spots became more and more of a rarity, let alone some place you could place set your things down on.

It was after there was barely any room left that the Faunus from earlier stepped in, clutching a simple sleeping bag to her chest like her life depended on it. She scanned the area, ears turning this way and that, trying to find a spot of floor that was free, wasn't occupied by the troublemakers or the intimidating among us, or avoided for good reason—a difficult task to say the least.

By chance, there was a tiny free spot by me, just enough to fit someone of her size. I could have easily ignored her and let her find some other free space, but that would have been hypocritical of me as a future huntress.

And if there was anything I hated, it was hypocrites.

I stood up and hailed her attention. Among a sea of students already sitting down, laying around, or just flat-out unconscious, I was a beacon dressed in stylish and comfortable pajamas, pardon the pun. Like a civilian trapped in the middle of a Grimm attack, the Faunus bolted towards me at me amazing speed, performing an impressive series of on-the-fly acrobatics, maneuvering, and footwork that ensured she had the fastest and safest journey to me possible, while being noticed by the least amount of people, and causing almost no disturbance to anyone. She reached that patch of free floor next to me completely unmolested, all but out of anyone's awareness but mine, but still, she anxiously gripped her sleeping bag to her chest.

“Can I sleep here…?” The Faunus asked in a voice so soft it was almost lost in the din of talking students and noisy sleepers.

I looked at her. She wasn't completely defenseless and helpless by any means—I could see her figure full of lean muscle, knew she'd had serious training from that impressive display of athletic skill, spatial awareness, and agility, and she was a student of Beacon Academy, to boot. But with that constant aura of fear and nervousness about her, she was sure to be a prime target for all sorts of misfortune, involuntary invisibility at the least, merciless bullying at the worst.

It was clear that she wasn't going to survive the coming years if she didn't make some very good, very brave, and very powerful friends, so I decided to be one of them.

I smiled at her. “I called you over, didn't I?” I said.

The Faunus smiled back, her face full of relief, warmth, and gratitude. My heart started beating faster than it had ever before, my face burned red, and my brain burned her appearance then into my mind. I hadn't an inkling what she had done to me exactly, but I knew one thing:

It was _far_ too late to do anything about it.


	2. Chapter 2

So much has been written about the beauty of a sunrise; folk tales, stories, and legends will forever abound from the almost supernatural realm that is midnight; and almost every couple has or wanted to experience that magical world that only a sunset can give you, yet so few people have ever bothered to talk about what it's like during the wee hours of the morning.

They don't even bother gracing it with a neat, one word name, that's how much they care about it.

Oh, sure, there's been tons of stories about people waking up at this supposedly ungodly hour, but all they ever talk about is how it's impossible to get back to sleep, complain about how whatever disturbance had woken them up couldn't wait till morning, or think and panic about how they're going to get the energy to do what needs to be done when they're supposed to be awake.

The few positive things that have been written about it tend to fall into the realm of the obscure of the quirky, entertaining, but ultimately dismissed. Maybe someone decides to wake up early in the morning for a month or two and shares how much more they've gotten done; maybe someone notes that they appear to be a sort of reverse-vampire, rising before the dawn rather than turning in; maybe someone notes an interesting sight that only happens at this hour, like the clean-up crews that descend on the streets and make things civilized before the morning rush plunges it into anarchy all over again.

The world of 4 AM in the morning is interesting, different, and with a quality all of its own. The sun isn't up but it's not pitch black outside, either. The late nighters have turned in, gone home, or passed out, night owls are slowly coming down from their peak, early birds are getting their last few hours of rest, those that sleep till noon slumber on. Only a few shops and businesses are open, the streets are all but empty, and all is peaceful and quiet.

In the case of my first day at Beacon, it let me cross the sea of sleeping bodies, blankets, and pillows unnoticed and undisturbed. I was on edge that morning--though my nightcap had stayed on and no one had bothered to mess with me in my sleep or set me up for an awful morning prank, and the Faunus girl that slept next to me didn't fidget too much or have her limbs stray out to my area, I knew it was luck as much as preparation that had kept my secret safe.

It was going to be easier once I was assigned a dorm room with its own bathroom for four, but for now, I was stuck using public facilities, picking out my clothes from the pile of possessions, luggage, and bags in the corner, and hoping to high hell no one else was going to need the girl's bathroom any time soon.

My fears were confirmed when I stepped in the door and got a good look of the facilities—barely any privacy to be seen anywhere. Because of the aforementioned dorm rooms, Beacon saw no need to give the students any privacy with communal bathrooms; save for a solid wall of concrete on which the second row of showers were mounted and the toilet stalls, there were only four floor-to-ceiling walls, and the layout was about as open as it got.

I did a quick check, roaming around the area, ducking my head under the stalls, listening for any sign of anyone else inside or in the hall outside. I did a second run just to be sure, and when that also turned up clear, I hurried to the nearest set of benches to the showers, stripped, and got ready for the fastest shower of my life.

I stepped in with two very important pieces of clothing still on me—my beret, and my pants, the one leg now devoid of the ribbons tied across its length. One final look back at the door to make sure no one had entered after me, I took them both off and hid them underneath my towel in case of emergency.

My ears and tail eagerly twitched and stretched out once they were out in the open. To be honest, it felt _damn_ good not to be hiding them underneath my hat and stuffing it down a pant leg before tying it down with ribbon—freeing, natural, a pleasure I've constantly, willingly deprived myself of, if only because the consequences of keeping them out were far, far, _far_ worse.

It wasn't that I was ashamed of my being a Faunus—I wouldn't trade my tiger ears, my lovely striped tail, my enhanced senses, and natural instincts for anything in all of Remnant.

It was more that I was afraid.

Afraid of what would happen if anyone found out my secret.

Afraid of what was going to happen to my fellow Faunus once I'm found out.

Afraid of what was going to happen to me once everyone knew what I _really_ was.

* * *

I remember the first day I wore my beret.

It was a decade ago, give or take a year or two, when I was still learning most of the basics like how to write my own name, mathematics, and how to read more than simple words in large, colourful script. Mother was holding a combination press conference and tea party—a rarity in my home, given how much she valued her privacy, how much she hated having other people over in her almost completely private sanctum, and how much she liked to enjoy the intricacies, nuances, and eccentricities of the world at large from a safe distance, preferably behind a thick glass wall or a scroll screen.

As you would expect from a fashion designer, she made sure we were both dressed up for the occasion. Unlike all the other times, however, the skirt on the dress I wore was much longer than the all the tohers, mother asked me to keep my tail out of view, and added one final item before we left my room: a brand new beret that fit snugly on my head, and neatly hid my ears from view.

I looked up at mother with the kind of innocent, curious eyes only a young child could make. Mother smiled back down at me and scratched my head through the fine wool of my new hat. “Just keep your tail and your ears hidden for now, okay, love? I want to show you something.”

I nodded obediently. Neither mother nor daddy had ever intentionally led me to wrong, so I grabbed her hand and walked with her into our parlor, used for its intended purpose for the first time since I was born.

There was a bevy of flashes, yelling, and attention suddenly on the both of us as soon as the doors opened--my very first memory of the paparazzi, the one that would firmly cement my severe hatred of them. I growled out of instinct and clutched my mother's leg, she casually wrapped her tail around my waist while her hands were busy subtly warding off those that got too close, usually with a few choice, brief flashes of her finely manicured, beautifully painted, and _very_ sharp claws.

I stayed by her leg while the photos kept on flashing around me and in the corner, the one lucky reporter with full video coverage caught it all on film. There were so many questions all of a sudden, a huge flood of inquiries, gossip, and requests for confirmation that had my head swimming within ten seconds. Like a true socialite, mother politely answered them all while giving the least amount of actual information, expertly dismissed them, and confirmed only the facts she was comfortable with sharing.

There were many, many, _many_ requests for close-up photos of yours truly, but mother declined, citing that I was just a small child, it wouldn't do to expose me to the full extent of the media this early. Also heavily implied: if you did so anyway, a formal complaint with your media company, a strongly-worded public outcry, and the loss of your camera was going to be the _least_ of your worries.

Eventually, the press were satisfied or realized they weren't about to get anymore from my mother. I thought it was over, but apparently that was just the rumour mongers cue to descend and get information and all the juicy details.

Their group was spearheaded by a woman. I was sure she was a very nice, law-abiding, and responsible citizen of our dear society, but then and there, her hair was too big, she was far acting far too nice and close to my mother when I _knew_ she really shouldn't have been, and her strong perfume was making me dizzy. And then these words came out of her lips, and she was an unquestionably, perennially nasty, awful woman I would do my best to avoid for as long as she lived:

“Oh, darling, she's beautiful! You know, the whole fashion world's just been abuzz—it's a girl, but is it a human or is it a Faunus? Such a burning, _important_ question you know, the answer we all simply _have_ to know! I'm so happy to see that your little girl's just a perfect little angel, even if she doesn't have those famous feline features of yours, dear! Oh, the media alone would have had an entire field _month_ if she were born a Faunus!

“No offense to you, dear, but you know how the media is when it comes to dealing with your people.”

And so on, and so forth. I can't quote her exactly, because the rest of it came out as a vile slurry of jabs about my lineage, not-so-subtle implications that quite a few people thought my daddy wasn't my biological father, and all the other colourful accusations people are so fond of lobbing on Faunus, social class and reputation be damned.

I didn't have the words for it—no one had taught me the meaning of “slander,” “degradation,” and “racial discrimination” yet—but I knew that something very bad was happening and that the ladies and the gentlemen shouldn't have been saying all those things so casually, so cheerfully, and without the slightest hint of remorse or knowledge that what they were saying wasn't as harmless and “edgy but not truly offensive” as they seemed to think they were.

To her credit, mother took the abuse standing, her head held up proudly, and a serene smile on her face. Though I could feel the fury and indignation boiling up inside of her like blazing hot magma, she kept it down by sheer force of will and those qualities of hers that made her the amazing woman she is.

The press and the guests were gone within the hour. Mother was not making any pretenses, and she was not in the mood for letting anyone get a little bit more footage or some more exclusive information than what they had already gotten. They were had been inside my home because she chose to let them in, they knew what they knew because she chose to let them know, and they were going to leave because she chose to politely coax them all to **go,** out the door and out of our lives.

Mother slammed the door with relish, intentionally smashing an intrepid reporter in the face when they tried the “Last Minute Head Stick In” trick on her. She spent a few moments smiling in relief that it was all over, before she walked back to me, knelt down till we were face to face, and warm, loving kiss on my forehead.

Mother looked down on me with pride, affection, and deep apology in her eyes. “You can take your hat and the dress off now, love.” She said.

I didn't.

* * *

I was busy shampooing my tail when I heard the door open. I was lucky I had turned off the water, because whoever stepped in barely made a sound, as if they were intentionally trying to sneak up on me. My shower cap and the steam from earlier would handily hide my ears from view, but there was no pretending my tail was anything other than what it was.

In short: I was _doomed_ if they stepped into the showers.

"Who in the world could be up at this hour, too?" I wondered as my heart started pounding like crazy, my ears pulled back, and I had to hold my tail down in a vice grip to keep it from rising up in instinctive panic. There was only one way to find out, so I stuck my head out the concrete wall separating the showers from the lockers, keeping the rest of myself as hidden as I could.

My eyes met my intruder's own—a familiar pair of big brown orbs, ones I recognized from an image burned in my mind.

We both blushed. She looked down at the floor, making a deep, thorough examination of the tiles there. “… I'll wait until you're done.” She said softly. “Don't worry; I have a thing against showering with other people, too, and I _promise_ I won't look.”

“Got it, thank you.” I replied, before I quickly ducked back into the shower and turned on the water to hide the sounds of my scrubbing my tail. Unlikely as it was that she was going to listen in on me bathing, I wasn't taking any chances.

I was still dripping wet when I stepped out of there, my beret back on my head, pants over my arm, towel around me. My tail was curled up tightly enough to hide it from view, but not tight enough to make a too suspicious bulge on my towel—it was an awkward, almost painful thing to do, but my secret getting blown was much, much, _much_ worse.

“Your turn.” I said to her as I ducked out of view behind a row of lockers.

She made a little affirmative noise and rushed into the showers. The sounds of running water filled the bathroom once more, I waited for a few tense moments, paranoid she was going to stick her head out or another early morning person was going to enter.

I finally ended up dressing inside one of the bathroom stalls. I had never stuffed my tail down my pant leg so quickly before, nor had I ever tied it down so tightly with the ribbons; I never will again because that was _painful_ , with or without the panic coursing through my whole system.

I was out of the bathroom in record time, fully dressed but still damp and in desperate need of a mirror, a brush, and a hairdryer. I'd worry about my appearance later, when panicked thoughts weren't screaming through my head.

“How much did she see?” I thought. “Does she know my secret? What am I going to do?!”

A huge part of me was beside itself with worry, while a small part in the back of my mind was ecstatic, if only because I now had a reason to talk to her.


	3. Chapter 3

I fled to the closest other bathroom I could find, partly because I needed a place to hide, gather my composure, and fix my hair, but mostly because I could feel my tail going numb from loss of blood circulation, and I rather wanted to avoid needing it amputated, thank you very much.

Lucky for me, there were only a handful of other people awake at this hour, so I could awkwardly limp through the halls at top speed without worry, sweat pouring down my brow, rushing past the occasional person in the halls without a word, the expression on my face giving all the explanation they needed and all the cover I could ever want.

I burst through the doors, then locked myself into the nearest toilet stall. Damned if I wasn't the only person inside, I could tell the first few inches of my tail was already turning purple. My hands flew over to the ribbons on my leg, struggling to undo the tight knots; I was just about to slash them open when they finally pulled apart, and blood started flowing as normal.

I let out a sigh of relief, then spent the next couple of minutes sitting down on the lid, massaging the feeling back into my tail while thinking about how doomed I was exactly and what I was going to do about it.

Worst case scenario: she had seen my tail or realized I was a Faunus, and either by intentionally telling someone or accidentally letting it slip; my secret was out; and I would be forced to confront the scandal and the aftermath once the news inevitably spread like wildfire over all of Remnant. My life as I knew it would be over, and there was the very real possibility I'd have to withdraw from Beacon, abandon the plan altogether, and spend the rest of my life hiding away from the world in my childhood home.

Not a very happy thought, to say the least.

Glass-half-empty: she _did_ know I was a Faunus, and would soon be using it to blackmail me, or saving it for a later date when she might need or want something from me. Though she didn't look like the kind of person to stoop to such low and underhanded tactics, I knew from personal experience that fear and desperation can make monsters of all of us.

And sometimes, monsters came in the guise of angels.

Glass-half-full: she didn't know I was a Faunus, but would be curious about my behaviour for whatever reason, and ask me or ask around. I'd have to pull out one of the _many_ excuses and tall tales I had saved for just such an occasion, or cultivate an eccentric behaviour that'd make people not question the things I needed to do to hide my Faunus features, or just write me off as a weirdo you were much better off avoiding and not thinking about too much.

Though I was intentionally being anti-social now, I realized I was going to need friends, or at the very least friendly acquaintances and contacts if I was going to survive Beacon—let alone my future teammates…

Best case scenario: she _didn't_ know I was a Faunus, didn't suspect a thing, and didn't want to know, or she did, but she realized I had good reason to and respected my privacy, this incident would fade from memory, and we could go about our business without me worrying that my life was about to get completely, absolutely _annihilated._

The thought made me smile, and I sincerely wished that was the case. However, as my mother always advised me: “Hope for the best, prepare for the worst, and then think a little of what you're going to do if things get even worse.”

Had circumstances been different, this problem would have easily been solved by some paid witnesses, contracts, and an under-the-table exchange of Lien. If I even _implied_ that I needed to bribe someone, my mother would ask exactly two questions: “How much?” and “Who to?”

But, this wasn't the world of high society with all its shady backroom deals, illicit vices, and seedy underbellies; this was Beacon Academy, people weren't going to look the other way with the help of a little more Lien, and there was always the risk that the Faunus girl would be an upstanding, honest citizen that won't accept a bribe and will report the attempt to the proper authorities.

I realized there was exactly one thing I _could_ do: feign ignorance, and act as normal, like nothing had ever happened and there was nothing to worry about. As my mother also said: “The best way to keep a secret is to act like it doesn't exist. The worst way to keep it is to ask others if it's still a secret.”

I stuffed my tail down my pant leg, taking my time to redo the knot this time and make sure I wasn't going to choke the life out of it again. A double check of my beret to be sure it was still hiding my ears, an unnecessary flush of the toilet for cover, and I stepped out of the stall.

It was totally deserted, and I no longer had any reason to expose my Faunus features, but still, I couldn't help but worry and listen closely to every last noise as I fixed my hair.

* * *

The dining hall was filled to the brim with students of every year level, lining up for breakfast, hanging out at the tables, or being shuffled in to make sure they were awake and ready for the initiation test. It was noisy as all hell, conversations spanning a wide variety of subjects, the incident that morning or my being a Faunus not one of them.

I breathed a long, internal sigh of relief. My worries turned out to be for nothing, and my secret was safe.

I may have been overselling myself because my mother was _far_ from an A-list celebrity and information about my existence was intentionally downplayed and hidden unless specifically asked for, nor was I one of the most popular or interesting students on campus. But still, news of any Faunus trying to pass for human would probably have spread throughout the school and back within an hour of it being told.

I may have also been lulling myself into a false sense of security, thinking I was safe before the hidden timer counted down to zero, or circumstances just happened to dictate that my life needed to get wrecked to tiny pieces—it wouldn't be the first time it had happened to me.

My fingers tightened on my tray, claws threatening to instinctively pop out and defend myself against threats both real and imagined. Then I relaxed, slowed my breathing and brought my heart rate down, forced my claws back into the hidden slits on the tips of my fingers.

'Pretend nothing's wrong.' I reminded myself.

I saw that same Faunus again as I sat down at a free table. She seemed to be trying to keep herself hidden and low-key, holding her tray close to her chest and keeping her head down as she looked for a seat, but that was rather difficult for two reasons: one, she was right beside Yatsuhashi and visual contrast was working against her, and two, no matter how little her height was, add in those bunny ears, and she would stick out in any crowd.

I felt sorry for her—here was a girl, harmless and meaning no one any harm, who only wanted to get by in life quietly and without conflict, but the very evolutionary trait that had kept her ancestors safe from harm was the very thing making her an easy target.

But then, could nature have really evolved a defense mechanism against this kind of predator, the one that didn't end your life, but made it completely miserable instead?

I realized I had been staring at her for _far_ too long, and quickly looked down at my food. My sunglasses would have made it difficult to trace my exact line of sight, but it was easy to make the jump about who exactly I was looking at. I silently scolded myself as I hacked into my pancakes; aside from the fact that her noticing me looking at her would clue her in to my secret, why exactly did I care what happened to her?

Because I was selfish and cowardly, but I wasn't heartless.

Because I was a Huntress, and my job was to protect those that couldn't protect themselves.

Because I knew what it was like to be ostracized, bullied, and victimized simply because you were born that way, and wouldn't wish that on anyone, even the people who were doing the ostracizing, the bullying, and the victimizing.

I shoved a chunk of my food into my mouth, chewing without any pleasure or care about the taste of it. I reminded myself that I wasn't some sort of hero that was fated to meet her, the angel that would swoop down and protect her from the cruel world—I was just someone who happened to go to the same school as her, and had offered her a place to sleep last night.

She also might have known my secret, and could have been the key to my undoing.

I forced my food down, set my utensils aside, and started thinking about this situation again. Was avoiding her, hoping to high hell that things would be forgotten really the best way to go? The glass-half-full scenario assumed she knew, and would have a reason to use it against me.

… But what if she didn't? What if there was a conflict of interest, that keeping my secret would be better for her, and would be more profitable than lording the threat of revealing it over me? What if the very thought of betraying my secret repulsed her, or she'd never have reason for it to cross her mind in the first place?

My brain was concocting a _very_ risky idea, a _highly_ morally questionable ploy, a plan that could go south _very_ hard, but for some reason, I ignored the large part of my brain reminding me the “Ignore it and pray it goes away.” plan was best, and instead listened to a tiny voice in the back telling me to go talk to her and _really_ set things into motion.

… Later, of course. I was going to be busy trying not to get killed or dismembered soon.

* * *

Technology could advance, new practices and techniques could make the whole world of Grimm Hunting leaps and bounds safer for everyone, but the Beacon Academy Initiation Test would stay the same till the end of time. New students would still be launched into the Emerald Forest, the spring boards at Beacon Cliffs would still be the same ones that had been installed there who-knows-how-long-ago, and the students would always have to figure out how in the hell they were going to land by themselves—let alone safely and without broken bones.

About the only thing that had changed was how the professors monitored it, from balloons, high towers, and powerful binoculars and telescopes, to scroll feeds and discrete surveillance equipment.

I saw that Faunus girl again as we were shuffled into transports and shipped out to the cliffs. Something, or someone seemed to be unnervingly intent on bringing our paths together, and that _bothered_ me. I didn't let it show, however; that could have been just what they wanted, their cue to make us practically inseparable no matter what may happen in the future.

We didn't end up sitting side by side, which was a good thing—turns out this force had its limits and wasn't completely omnipotent. We did, however, end up sitting across each other, within easy view, which was a _bad_ thing—I could easily notice how nervous she was, that Yatsuhashi didn't end up on the same transport as us, and the general public hadn't suddenly gotten more sympathetic to her.

“Hey.” I said.

Heads turned. The ones I didn't want to talk to I ignored, and the one I did want to talk to me was trying very hard to ignore the fact that I was most definitely looking at her. There was a brief thought that I may as well return it and see it as a sign that the “Ignore” plan was the best course of action, but I dismissed it.

“Yes, you—girl with the rabbit ears.” I continued.

There were other Faunus, but she was the only rabbit. Specifically singled out, she had no choice but to look at me. I could see the fear in her eyes, dozens of thoughts screaming through her mind, most of them probably asking herself why I was talking to her, some of them asking if it wasn't too late to bail out and get a transfer to a different vehicle.

“You're going to do fine, alright?” I lowered my sunglasses, cast her a confident look, and smiled.

Her face lit up as it did last night, my heart sped up once more, and I hoped to high hell I still looked as politely interested as I was earlier.

“Thank you.” She mumbled.

I put my sunglasses back up and relaxed. She took the hint and went back to watching the scenery go past or staring at the floor, noticeably calmer. There were a few smiles and chuckles from the other students, but otherwise, my gesture was too little to do any significant change.

Little did I know I was heading for disaster, and I'd only sped myself up.


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Coco referring to her "daddy" with feminine pronouns is intentional.

I was in the first batch of the day, one of sixteen students chosen by volunteering and random selection. In yet another stroke of fate, the Faunus girl and Yatsuhashi were there with me, but I didn't think much about it: they were together on one end of the line of springs, I was on the other, and Ozpin was already giving his speech. As I'd known from all the stories and accounts, the springs could start firing as soon as he says the last world, and the last one could go off almost a minute after, but the one thing for sure was that you didn't know when exactly you were going to get sent screaming into the air.

“Don't hesitate to destroy anything and everything that gets into your path.” Ozpin said. “Good luck, students.”

Three seconds after, the first spring fired. Then another, and another, and another. We were getting launched in ones, twos, and the one three, and we had no idea if we were going to be next. I tensed up, ears pulled back, grip tight on my weapon.

Some screamed in terror, others yelled and hooted, a few unfortunate saps let out surprised gasps as they suddenly found themselves flying.

My spring activated, and into the air I went. In spite of the winds blasting past me, my beret held onto my head without need for adhesive or ribbon—just one of the many innovations and techniques my mother had put into my clothes to ensure I wouldn't die from a lethal wardrobe malfunction or accidentally reveal my secret.

The tops of the Emerald Forest's ancient trees zoomed just below me, I gripped my weapon tightly and swung downwards. The sudden shift in weight sent me into the forests, crashing through the canopy, branches, leaves, and the one unfortunate bird smashing into my face and scratching me up. I didn't notice any of them, too busy focusing on my target:

A nice, thick limb, sturdy and long, attached to an old tree, one I would probably kill myself on if I didn't pull off this landing.

Up my weapon went again. The shift in weight sent me spinning once more, from head first into the branch to boots first. I felt the branch beneath my feet, sprang off of it before the momentum could catch up with me and shatter my bones. To the next tree I went, stepping off branch to branch, trunk to trunk, never on them for more than a second, gradually going slower and slower till I came to my final destination, a nice, thick tree with no low branches. I jumped towards it, held out my free hand, and unsheathed my claws.

I'd made sure to file them extra sharp a few days ago, and they hadn't gotten any less razor-like in that time; my claws dug into the ancient bark, gouging thick lines all over its surface as I spiraled around and behind it, before letting go and jumping off to a slow, graceful stop on the forest floor.

A perfect landing, if I did say so myself—and all of that in high heeled boots, which made me doubly proud.

My smile disappeared as I finally noticed I had an audience: another student, male, human, tall and muscular and definitely someone I hadn't met before.

I didn't flinch or panic—though under my beret, my ears perked to attention; underneath my pant leg, my tail started twitching, fighting against the ribbons and instinctively trying to show itself; on the handle of my weapon and my free hand, my claws threatened to unsheathe themselves again. I didn't outright drop into a fighting stance, but I did keep my weapon arm ready to swing, in case some violent persuasion was necessary.

“How much had he seen, I wondered? What was I going to do?”

Then, I noticed something very important about him: there was no colour in his eyes, only milky white all over—he was blind.

I relaxed.

“I won't tell.” He said.

I tensed up again.

“Tell anyone what…?” I asked.

“That you're a Faunus.”

I had planned for this specific moment—I had made up so many scenarios in my head, so many ploys, so many contingencies in case I was found out, and someone decided to confront me directly about it. I had thought all that practice was going to let me spring to action should the moment actually come, that I had prepared for every last possible scenario, that I was going to be able to keep my secret safe no matter what happened.

I stood in front of him, shocked, confused, and paralyzed with fear, suffering from a familiar sickness in my stomach that I'd first felt so long ago.

* * *

Witnessing my mother get slandered, and the sheer casualness her slanderers had done it had left me feeling sick—it had also left me feeling self-conscious about my being a Faunus for the first time in my life, though I wasn't aware that was what the other awfulness in my stomach was.

Up until then, that fact had never been important except for three key issues: one, my clothes needed a hole in the back for my tail to slip through; two, I had that and tiger ears that needed to be scrubbed during bath time and kept clean and hygienic; and three, my toys included scratching posts, plushies filled with treats to be torn apart when I went “hunting,” and a heavy-duty teething ring specifically for carnivorous Faunus.

Otherwise, I was treated exactly like any other child, nothing but compliments based on, friendly jokes about, and certain precautions taken because of my ears and tail. (Granted, up until then there were only a handful of people I'd ever interacted with: my parents, my grandparents, and my “Auntie” Leana, my mother's agent and best friend.) No one had ever given me reason to feel conscious about who I was; no one had ever told me the divide between humans and Faunus went far deeper than ears, tails, and animalistic instincts; and no one had ever told me there were going to be people who were going to judge me and mistreat me simply because I was born this way.

The events earlier had been confusing, shocking, and horrible—that I was barely old enough to wrap my head around the reasons behind the racism, and that my mother had not briefed or prepared me in the slightest beforehand made it worse.

So it was I changed out of the dress, but was still wearing the beret when my daddy found me in my room, quietly thinking about what just happened, with my favourite chew toy in my mouth. There was a smile on her face as she opened the door, one that quickly turned into a frown as soon as I didn't look at her or greet her offhand, too lost in thought.

“Sugar, you're still hiding your adorable little ears.” She said.

I snapped out of my thoughts and looked at my daddy. Chew toy still in my mouth, I nodded.

She stepped in to my room. “Don't you want to take it off?”

I thought for a moment, and slowly shook my head.

Daddy frowned even more and joined me on the floor. “Would you like me to take it off for you?”

This wasn't the first time I'd ever been conflicted over a decision, but it was the very first that was much more serious than if I wanted bacon pancakes or Savannah Crispies for breakfast. I spent a long time just chewing, shuffling back and forth between “Yes” and “No,” too young to have the benefit of a mental pros and cons list or any of the other techniques that make decisions easier. Daddy waited patiently beside me the whole time, letting me think it out.

Finally, I turned to her, and nodded. Daddy quietly pulled my beret off my head. Even then, it felt good to free them from their cover, because no matter how soft, warm, and luxurious the fabric was, there was no substitute to letting them go free. I still felt a little bit of panic that my ears were out, before my daddy put her fingers between them and started scratching.

I quickly fell into her lap and melted into a little ball of purring and happiness; like my mother, my daddy was the only person who really knew how to scratch me like that, the one that would make me forget about everything but getting more “scritchies,” whatever the means.

My daddy slowed her pace, going to a slow, comfortable speed that'd let me think but still keep me relaxed and limp. “Did you keep your hat on because your mother told you two?”

I let the chew toy fall out of my mouth. “No.”

“Did you keep it on because someone else told you to?”

“No.”

“Did you keep it on because of something that happened earlier?”

“Yes.”

“Would you mind telling me?”

As best as a child with a limited vocabulary and understanding of the full situation, I explained to my daddy that my mother had just thrown me into the world of Faunus discrimination and racism without warning, and had decided to hide my being a Faunus so no one would have reason to censor themselves.

My daddy nodded, patiently smiling and urging me to continue with the painful, confusing memories, but I could tell that beneath that look of calm, anger was boiling inside of her, a different kind of rage than my mother's, and it's own brand of terrifying. Fortunately for me, that fury was most _definitely_ not aimed towards me. Daddy scratched me one last time, before she planted a kiss between my ears, a gesture that never failed to make them twitch in a rather pleasant fashion.

“I'm just going to go talk to your mother now, sugar;” daddy said as she got up. “You just stay here and play for a while, okay?” She said as she left.

I nodded and went back to my other toys, dressing up my dolls in custom made, miniature versions of my mother's signature dresses, before I sent them all on a Safari of Doom and “saved” them by tearing out the throats of all the “monsters” that wanted to eat them, a task I relished because said monsters had delicious chewy meat treats inside their necks.

Both my parents came back a half-hour later. The proud, powerful, and confident aura I usually saw my mother with was gone; with her ears flat against her head, her tail between her legs, and that whipped look on her face, she felt more like a young, helpless, defenseless kitten. My daddy was wearing her “serious” look, shoulders slightly tensed, eyes distinctly less friendly and warm than usual, her lip curled ever so slightly in a scowl.

I looked up from gnawing on an “evil man-eating gazelle's” neck, my eyes asking them what was up.

My daddy subtly jabbed my mother in the ribs. She winced, then smiled at me. “Could you please sit down on your bed with us, Coco? There's something I should have told you earlier, before I introduced you to all those people.”

They gave me a condensed, child-safe version of how exactly Faunus were treated—frequently discriminated, bullied, ostracized, assaulted and even outright murdered became “people are oftentimes _very_ mean to them for no good reason,” for example. However simplistic it was, it went a long way in explaining what happened earlier, why exactly my mother had hidden my ears and tail, and why I still wanted to hide them.

“I'm very sorry for doing what I did to you earlier, Coco;” my mother said quietly. “That was wrong of me. I was so stuck thinking about how _I_ learned and dealt with it, that I forgot you and I are very different people raised in very different worlds. Can you ever forgive me?”

I nodded, then nuzzled up against her just to be sure she got it. My mother smiled and started happily stroking my back. My daddy smiled, looping her arm around my mother's shoulder.

“I'm very proud of you for forgiving your mother, Coco, even after her _really_ big mistake.” My daddy not-so-subtly shot her a glare. “And because she _really_ wants to make up for it, she's taking us Nazahah Karim's concert next week!”

“Mhmm!” My mother replied, pointedly ignoring my daddy's gaze, a forced smile on her face. “Not on her opening night on Friday, however, but the second night, Saturday.”

All transgressions and ill feelings towards anyone and anything were suddenly forgotten, replaced by the kind of all consuming excitement only a child can muster. I wasn't as big of a fan of Nazahah as my daddy, but I did enjoy listening to her music, and she was a tiger Faunus just like me, which made me instantly like her.

The decision ended up being yet another traumatic experience that would end up scarring me forever and filling me with those same ill-feelings, but to be fair, there was nothing anyone could have done about it, least of all myself.

With the blind student knowing my secret, however? _That_ was something that was within my control and my power to change, where I could have done something, but didn't.

It was the first of many blunt, in-your-face experiences that taught me I wasn't as prepared and ready for this plan as I thought.

Not by a long shot.


	5. Chapter 5

“Here's how you'll actually react when someone finds out your secret! Congratulations, they don't care in the slightest! Now do better next time, or you better start thinking of which of your things you can flee with in a hurry when we decide to stop giving you so many lucky breaks.” The universe seemed to be saying to me.

I  silently asked my new teammate for some time to think.  He nodded, then patiently waited for me.  E ither he was aware that someone wouldn't hide their true species without good reason, or he didn't want to get in trouble for abandoning his partner and letting her get eaten by Grimm while she was deep in thought;  a t the very least, I was sure there weren't going to be many problems with our new partnership.

First I resolved to be more careful, then made a mental list of which of my possessions I absolutely _could not_ stand to leave at Beacon, and finally rethought my strategy if someone directly confronted me with the fact that I was a Faunus, because confidently refuting them, being blasé and/or dismissive about it worked out _so_ well. Eventually I realized extensive thought and rumination would have to wait till later, when I was safely back in Beacon and not standing in the middle of the Emerald Forest. I looked back at my new partner, found him still standing as he was earlier when he calmly destroyed almost all of my confidence in my plan, face still emotionless and unreadable.

“My name's Coco.” I said, unsure of what else to say.

“Fox.” He replied.

“… So, shall I lead our little merry band of two, or should you?” I joked.

Fox didn't crack a smile. If he recognized it as an attempt at humour, he wasn't amused. I awkwardly moved my weapon back into a subtle combat ready position, turned around, and started walking deeper into the forest. Fox quietly followed after me, sheer silence around us but the sounds of our feet on the forest floor below us.

I assured myself Fox wasn't some sort of cold-blooded murderer who had snuck into Beacon to start a spree of dead aspiring hunters and huntresses—probably.

We walked for a good ten minutes in that ominous silence. The Emerald Forest was beautiful and peaceful, with its ancient trees left completely untouched by mortal hands except for the occasional bit of collateral damage from last year's initiation. It was also dangerous and terrifying, the silence around us meaning one of three things: the Grimm were stalking us to either study us or kill us, the Grimm were off preying on a more helpless looking batch of students, or they were stalking us, but caught wind of much easier prey and slunk off with that same unnerving stealth.

I was glad to see a beowolf ahead of us, mostly hidden from our view by thick shrubbery. It was pawing the ground and sniffing out tracks, likely from a different student that had run through the area and hid from it. I smiled, readied my weapon, and looked back at Fox; he was already dropping into a combat position, ready to shank the Grimm if necessary, but the little discrete nod he gave me meant he wanted me to have the honours.

I smiled at him, then turned back to the Grimm. Under my beret, my ears pulled back; under my sunglasses, my eyes turned to narrow slits; under my feet, my footprint became just a little bit bigger as I sprung into action.

It just realized I was attacking and turned its head to look at me.I grinned back at it.

Then the both of us were almost killed by a lightning bolt.

It was horizontal, which assured me that a freak electrical storm had not mysteriously formed above us without either me or Fox noticing. It missed me by an inch and struck the Grimm instead. The beowolf wailed, bolts and sparks coursing through and raining from its body, hind paws still somehow planted on the ground even as it jerked and thrashed like crazy. It was _far_ too late for me to keep my weapon from hitting it, which made me pray that it was as well-designed and top-of-the-line as the creators assured me it was as it connected with its face.

Under normal circumstances, my weapon could hit like a sledgehammer. Just then, it was more akin to a head on collision by a small airship going at terminal velocity.

All that electricity suddenly surged up and concentrated on the point of impact. The beowolf couldn't even cry out before its head exploded in a storm of sparks, its decapitated corpse flying off into the distance before quickly evaporating. The leftover energy surged into my weapon, hundreds of volts of power that even my Aura would have a problem protecting me from, but fortunately all that electricity stayed on the metal studs on the edges than coursing up into my hand and to some _very_ bad places afterward.

I was stunned from surprise once more, standing and staring at where the Grimm _used_ to be. Even Fox didn't see that coming; you didn't need to turn around to look at him to know that Mr. Stoic and emotionless had been left dumbfounded, but only for a few moments—once Fox saw something happen once, it didn't seem to be able to faze him a second time.

Silence fell over the area, but for the sound of the electricity harmlessly discharging in the air as static.

“… That was a lot more powerful than I intended...” A familiar voice mumbled.

I turned to look and see if my ears were deceiving me. They weren't—out from the bushes came the Faunus girl I kept running into, dressed up in armour, and with a box strapped to her waist. I tried to find her weapon—I'd rarely ever seen anything be able to fire raw elements like that—but she seemed to be unarmed.

She saw me, and her eyes widened in recognition. “Quite the coincidence that we keep running into each other, don't we?” I joked, mostly because it made me feel _slightly_ better about the forces that were obviously still pulling the strings of our lives into a tangled mess.

She mumbled something I couldn't hear before she turned to Fox. Her ears seemed to flatten in fear as she took him in—tall, muscular, and just standing there looking terrifying and intimidating. I doubt the blank white of his eyes helped her image of him any.

“He's Fox.” I said. “Don't worry, he's on our side.” I hoped. I turned to Fox. “And Fox, this is...” I trailed off as I suddenly realized I still didn't know her name after all we've been through.

Most people would have thought up of some form of unique nickname other than “Faunus girl” or “female rabbit Faunus” by this point, but I'd grown up in a world where getting someone's name wrong or accidentally blurting out your personal nickname for them would get you a whole heaping of personal scorn at the least, and social exile at the worst. I looked back at her, silently urging her to please give it.

“Velvet.” She mumbled.

“Velvet.” I repeated—and chose to wonder later about why exactly it felt so strangely nice and exciting to say it. “And since we're all doing introductions right now, I'm Coco.” I continued. “So, Velvet, got separated from your partner, or did you intentionally split up?”

Velvet frowned, her ears pulling up from against her head to droop over it this time. “I don't have a partner yet… I think I landed _really_ far from everyone else...” She mumbled.

“Want to join us, then?” I offered. “Grimm generally don't like groups of armed hunters and huntresses.”

Velvet smiled, a look I was quickly realizing would always make my heart start thumping double time, and make an irrational, inexplicable happiness bloom inside me. “I'd like that.” She said as her ears pulled back up to their usual height.

I looked at Fox for confirmation, and took his unchanged expression as, “Yes, she can join us.”

“Lead the way, Fox.” I said. He turned around into a different section of vision-blocking brush and stepped in, cutting up the more problematic branches with his wrist blades for us. Velvet looked uneasy about him in the lead, but I forced myself to step in line with him, so she did too.

Fox kept looking forward the entire time (or at least, _facing_ forward), changing directions every once in a while as he saw fit. Though wherever he turned his head seemed irrelevant—he was blind, after all—we had a feeling that he could sense far more than anyone with all five basic senses could.

Grimm had stopped trying to stalk us or weren't in our general area after the Exploding Beowolf, so Velvet took the opportunity to ask me questions about Fox—or rather, throw me meaningful, silent looks, while I replied with the same gesture, and we somehow understood each other perfectly. If I had to verbalize the conversation, it would have gone like this:

“What's the deal with Fox?” Velvet asked.

“He's blind, and an actual enigmatic loner.”

Velvet frowned. “That's all you know?”

“Yes.” I replied. “Don't worry though, I'm sure we're perfectly safe keeping him around. And if we aren't, I'll handle it.” I smiled and lowered my sunglasses so she could see my eyes.

I had no idea where that last part came from, but it made Velvet calmer, so I didn't think too much of it.

I'm pretty sure Fox could “overhear” our conversation, but he didn't care that we were “talking” about him, he didn't see it as a serious enough personal offense to confront us with, or he was far too focused with whatever it was he was doing exactly.

We wandered through the Emerald Forest for a good half-hour, through brush, through branches, and through all manner of pitfalls and obstacles, following only his back and the occasional warning like “hole,” “low branch,” and “animal poop.” I steadily lost my patience with him as the situation started feeling like a mostly silent version of that comedy favourite, the fearless, confident, and proud leader marching forward with head held up high, song on his lips, and a loyal line of troops following them to their doom.

Velvet grew similarly uneasy, till she quietly cast me a look asking me if I could do the talking for the both of us. I was just about to do so when Fox suddenly stopped in front of a tall wall of grass. Like small gusts of wind, he shredded it apart into confetti; when the chunks of felled grass floated to the ground or blew away we found ourselves looking at some ancient ruins, a circle in the center with pedestals all around its edge and the artefacts we had to retrieve on them. And what were they, exactly?

“Coffee cups…?” Velvet asked after we made our way down to it.

I shrugged. “Who ever really knows what Professor Ozpin is thinking?” I said as I took one of the remaining ones from the pedestals, examining it before I stashed it into my pocket. So far as I could tell, every single one of them was blank and plain white save for the identical beacon logo embossed on the front of each.

I turned back to Fox, and found him staring out at the forest around us; not one for celebrating till its well and truly over, I thought as I stepped up to him. “Good job, Fox.” I said as I patted him on the back.

By sheer circumstance, he turned around at just the right moment for my hand to miss and pat him on his arse instead. His normally expressionless face lit up in embarrassment; I smiled with honest apology, but I had to admit, seeing Mr. Stoic be not so-stone-faced made me feel a lot better about being partner's with him for the next four years.

I looked back at Velvet, saw her standing in front of the pedestals, looking unsure if she should take a cup or wait for someone without a partner to come get it with her. She turned around and saw me and Fox, our mission complete save for heading back to the rendezvous point to get shipped back to Beacon. Her ears drooped as did the curve of her lips, and I decided to myself, that would simply _not_ do.

“Hey, don't worry; I'm sure you'll find your partner soon enough.” I said to her. “Just wait here: everyone's bound to end up here eventually. Who knows? They might be just around the corner.” I smiled again.

Velvet was just about to return it, before she suddenly looked terrified and worried. I frowned, turned around, and saw Fox lowering himself into a combat position, facing one of the other walls of tall grass that surrounded the area. A few moments later, we heard an ominous ruckus coming closer and closer:

The thundering of many feet.

Branches cracking, brush getting flattened, animals scurrying away as a lot _something_ _s_ came charging through.

Screaming and yelling—terrified screaming and yelling.

Two students came bursting out of the brush, holding their weapons for dear lives. Soon after, a horde of beowolves and ursa came charging after them. I flicked the switch on my bag and in seconds, it transformed into its minigun form. I already started the motor, barrel spinning at full speed, but I had to hold my fire as I saw one _very_ important detail in the horde:

Yatsuhashi in the mouth of a _very_ large Ursa Major, him punching it in the eyes as it tried to bite him in half.


	6. Chapter 6

The Ursa Major charged straight for me while still trying to bite Yatsuhashi in half. I started strafing, aiming my gun at its sides and the cronies flanking it, before it suddenly shifted, using him as a hostage and shield for its whole accursed horde. I cursed and circled to the other side, but it just kept on throwing him into the line of fire, moving too fast for me to peel off even a short burst of gunfire to keep its minions safe while it steadily wore away at Yatsuhashi's aura.

Of all the Grimm in the Emerald Forest, I had to run into the one that recognized a minigun when it saw one, and was smart enough to know what to do to render it useless.

I had 600 rounds loaded and ready to fire; just one of those bullets could cause the lesser ranks of Grimm serious physical damage, let alone several dozens of them in a hail of armour-piercing lead; and if I wanted to, I could have ended the fight in seconds, shredded those cronies into nothing and gunned the Ursa Major down with a little bit of focus fire...

... But I had this sinking feeling Yatsuhashi couldn't survive getting perforated with that many bullets, even if he was as almost indestructible as he seemed to be.

I gritted my teeth and kept strafing, hoping for an opportunity that just wouldn't happen. Fox and Velvet could definitely hold their own, but the other two students didn't look any more capable of fighting off the Grimm than they were then, and running from them was no longer an option. I had to make a decision: go back to melee, extend this fight, and risk the others getting killed or injured? Or fire away, shred this horde, and pray that Yatsuhashi would make it out okay?

“HELP!” One of that unlucky pair screamed.

I pressed the button to start the motor, and prayed to whoever was listening as I put my finger on the trigger. Though the loss of one life was a tragedy, _two_ was even worse.

“Don't!” Velvet yelled. “You're going to kill him!”

“I _know_ that!” I yelled over the whirr of the motor and the sounds of battle. “Do you have any better ideas?!” I cried as I snapped my head to Velvet.

Velvet stopped, a look of fear, confusion, and hopelessness falling over her face as her ears drooped down. A beowolf sensed her despair, and happily took the opportunity to pounce on her from behind. I opened my mouth to yell at her, even if I knew my words would be far too late.

Then those brown eyes of hers suddenly hardened as her ears suddenly pricked straight back up at full alert. The beowolf opened its jaws, only to get Velvet's foot in its teeth as she delivered a ferocious roundhouse. My mouth remained open, but no words came out.

I put my finger off the trigger. A different beowolf decided to pounce on me, I blocked it with my gun, its jaws sinking into the barrel instead of my arm. Its head went spinning around before I punched it off, then pushed a button to get my minigun folding and compacting itself back into a handbag.

We looked at each other. We didn't say anything, but those few seconds were all we needed to get the plan across. After all, we'd already done it before, if accidentally.

With my gun no longer out, the Ursa Major stopped using Yatsuhashi as a shield and turned him into a ramming head, letting out a muffled roar as it charged me again. I just snarled at it, fangs bared, and weapon held behind my head.

Velvet opened that box on her waist. She pulled out what looked like a dust crystal, crushed it between her palms, and suddenly her hands were crackling with electricity. She moved her arms through the air, the energy building and gathering into a ball, before she thrust it out towards the Ursa Minor.

Another horizontal lightning bolt crackled through the area, and into our target. It wasn't stunned like the beowolf was, nor did it let go of Yatsuhashi, but it did slow down a good bit, enough for me to get a good, powerful downward swing right on top of its ugly head.

Its jaws fell open from the brutal shock of all that electricity surging into the new bruise on its head. Fortunately for us, Yatsuhashi dropped to the ground before he could get shocked, too, and I grabbed him and pullei us both out of there just as the energy exploded.

 _Un_ fortunately, the Ursa Major's head hadn't exploded, and the blast just sent it reeling.

Stray sparks and bolts burned the back of our clothes and sent unpleasant shocks up our spines, but we didn't gotten electrocuted that badly. I'd assumed Yatsuhashi would need to take a few moments to catch his breath and recover from being chewed on and nearly bitten in half by a Grimm, then almost killed by a dust lightning strike, but as soon as he could, he peeled my hand off of him and ran off with a determined look on his face.

I looked in the direction he was going, and saw a wall of Grimm slowly closing in on something, undoubtedly our unlucky duo. Fox was at the outside, slashing and punching as he tried to breach the wall, but he could only engage one or two Grimm at a time and there were _far_ more than that.

One beowolf in the back was about to pounce, before Yatsuhashi grabbed it around the waist, lifted it straight up into the air, then slammed it straight into a brand new crater in the ground. The unlucky monster turned to smoke and ashes as a shockwave erupted out from it and knocked all the others away. All four of us took the opportunity to rush into opening and form a line between the Grimm and our fellow students.

The monsters recovered and quickly surrounded us once more, all gnashing teeth, ominous growls, and slashing claws. We stared them down in return, weapons or fists at the ready, determined looks on our faces, both sides ready for a messy, brutal, bloody fight to the death... until the Ursa Major let a powerful, intimidating roar, and all of its cronies suddenly backed away, opening up a divide in their line to let their leader pad up to us.

As far as Grimm went, the expression on its face was completely, absolutely unamused and very, very, _very_ angry.

Obviously, this fight had just turned _personal._ It wasn't about to get any more fair, however, as the minions quickly reformed beside their leader, obviously eager to get their share after the Ursa Major was done with us.

“Velvet, got any more ideas?” I asked as my grip tightened on my handbag.

Velvet frowned. “No… unless any of you happen to have a trick up your sleeve that'll be really useful right now.” She replied.

“I can make the alpha explode.” Fox said. “But you'll need to hold it down for me so I can concentrate.”

Yatsuhashi nodded. “I can do that.”

The Ursa Major roared then charged, heading straight towards Yatsuhashi to finish the job. He met it head on, clutching its sides and wrestling with it even as its jaws sank into his shoulder. Fox rushed forward, jumping into the air before he started attacking, a blur of strikes and slashes. Just behind the both of them, Velvet and I fought off the minions charging to help their leader, bashing, blasting, and kicking to keep them from Fox or the students we were protecting.

Everything seemed to go in slow motion right there and then.

Fox landed one last punch into the Ursa Major, a powerful strike that sent its jaws flying off Yatsuhashi before it staggered back. The monster whined uneasily as its body started bloating and contorting to disturbing proportions.

Yatsuhashi let go of it and punched the ground, making another, smaller shockwave that gave us a few inches of precious breathing room for about three seconds. In that time, Velvet opened her box, pulled out an orange dust crystal, then blasted the ursa with a fireball, just to be sure.

The projectile hit it square in the chest, and its whole body was quickly ablaze. We were all suddenly _quite_ aware of just how close this flaming monstrosity was to us, and how quickly it was turning into a nightmarish balloon.

Velvet and the two students curled into balls and huddled as close as they could to the wall and each together. Fox crouched beside them and threw his arms up in defense, I ran to the other side and did the same, holding up my bag as a makeshift shield. Yatsuhashi spread his massive arms, and covered us all as best as he could.

It was show for those watching safely from a distance, and a total nightmare for us. The Grimm that weren't killed by the ursa major's's spines flying out like deadly missiles were incinerated in the ensuing inferno, howling, staggering, and flailing for about a split-second before they turned to ash and smoke.

I was the first to come out of the shock. The lock of hair that on the front of my face was gone, the top most layers of my clothes and handbag were burned and ruined, and I was _pretty_ sure I had wet myself. Then I realized how close my face had ended up to Velvet's, and I had to add “suddenly unable to breath properly,” “heart beating even faster,” and “blushing bright red” to my problems.

“Everyone alright?” Yatsuhashi asked.

The two students mumbled an affirmative, Velvet let out a tiny, terrified squeak. Fox let out a quiet grunt, I did a more pathetic sounding version of it. We stepped back and stood up, examined ourselves for injuries, then assessed the damage around us.

There was a giant burnt crater where the Ursa Major _used_ to be, and dozens of silhouettes burned into the ground where the other Grimm had been before they were vaporized. The ruins had become even more ruined, but through some stroke of luck or very good planning on Ozpin's part, the coffee mugs we were supposed to retrieve had remained intact, if singed and a little sooty.

We didn't make it out completely unscathed, but at the very least, we could _definitely_ say we ended up a _lot_ better off than the Grimm.

Velvet had brought some medical supplies with her, and we spent some time patching each other up in silence. The unlucky pair grabbed one of the coffee mugs off the pedestals, spending a few moments looking at it, reflecting, and wondering if it was worth all the effort they'd just put in and almost losing their lives, if not for our timely intervention.

“I don't know about you guys, but I'm heading back to Beacon.” One of them said as they secured their relic into their pockets. “If I'm supposed to come back to this place ever again, it'll be too soon.”

“Ditto!” The second continued. “You guys coming with?”

Yatsuhashi shook his head. “Can't. I dropped my sword back in the forest, and I need to get it back; it's a family heirloom and I don't like the idea of it staying here.”

“I'm staying, too;” Velvet mumbled. “I still need to find my partner.”

Yatsuhashi turned to her and smiled. “Want to be mine, then? I still haven't found mine, either.”

Velvet looked at him in surprise, before she smiled just as wide.

“Girl with the sunglasses, scary dude, you guys coming?” The pair asked us.

Fox turned to me, giving me a look that said it was up to me if we were heading back now. There really wasn't any reason for me to stay in the Emerald Forest, I figured, then I remembered a game my daddy taught me to play: “If Them, Want What?” (Short for “If I Were Them, What Would I Want?”)

That round went like this: “If I lost my weapon and family heirloom in a dangerous, Grimm infested forest, what would I want? Someone to help me look for it and watch my back.”

“Afraid we're going to be here a little while longer, too;” I replied. “After this fiasco, I don't think it's safe to be _just_ a twosome in here.”

The two students looked at us like we were crazy—and that we probably were—but they chose not to argue with us when they could have been making their way back to Beacon instead.

Yatsuhashi turned to myself and Fox, then bowed. “Thank you. I owe you guys big time for this.” He said.

Velvet smiled at us and wordlessly let us know she appreciated the help, too.

I felt yet another inexplicable surge of happiness inside me. “Well, no guesses as to where we'll be starting our search!” I said as I spun sharply to the trail of destruction the late Grimm horde had left. “Shall we grab your relic and head off?” I asked without looking back at anyone.

After their own coffee mug was safely secured in Velvet's box, the four of us made our way back into the forest, searching for Yatsuhashi's sword with Fox leading our merry little band.

I had assumed it was the first and last time we'd ever have to team up, barring tournaments and school-wide events. I was certain that having to work with Velvet on a daily basis would make the plan even more complicated and difficult than I had ever imagined it could be. Though I wasn't exactly sure of how she would accomplish that, some things you just had to rely on your gut feelings more than rational thought.

In hindsight, maybe that was exactly why we ended up in the same team for the next four years.


	7. Chapter 7

“Coffee? Tea? Or hot chocolate?” Professor Port asked as I handed him my and Fox's mug. “Before you make a decision, I'm obliged to tell you that the coffee is Oobleck's personal blend, the chocolate chosen by the student body, and the tea handpicked by yours truly.” He beamed as he set it onto a curved conveyor belt.

The mug went through a sterilizing machine, a smaller, more circularly designed version than the ones I'd usually see at formal events. It disappeared behind the safety flaps, then a contained explosion of red dust ensured it was clean, and any speck that somehow survived need only be wiped off. The mug, now completely, absolutely spotless came rolling back to us.

Professor Port picked it up and a second, generic mug, then looked at us for our answer. I turned to Fox but he still seemed to be as expressionless as always. I looked back at Port and shrugged. “Coffee for the both of us, I suppose.”

He smiled and proceeded to fill both mugs up from one of three beverage dispensers before handing it back to us. The Beacon symbol on the one from the forest started glowing, its lines turning into a brilliant topaz yellow.

I smiled. “Initiation’s a little more theatrical this year, it seems...” I said as I held it up.

The symbols on the mugs glowed with a vast array of different hues, two a colour. Students went off looking for their match, introducing themselves and conversing with each other before we were sent up to the stage for the formal announcement of the new teams. I scanned the area—emerald green, sapphire blue, ruby red--ntes my eyes locked on the second topaz yellow, and I looked up to see who was holding it.

I almost dropped the mug. So did Velvet.

Fortunately, neither of us dumped blazing hot beverages on ourselves or our teammates. _Un_ fortunately, the next four years were definitely going to be much more… interesting than I had anticipated.

I looked at Fox to tell him who were paired up with. It turns out I didn't need to, as he suddenly had a look on his face other than “unreadable and slightly menacing;” it was akin to a master of some form of martial arts who had just detected the flap of a butterfly that would irreversibly change history as we all knew it.

It was an expression I had learned to take as a sign that things were _very_ bad indeed.

I looked back at Velvet. Her ears had drooped, and she had a very worried look on her face—apparently I had not hidden my shock and surprise as well as I'd have wanted.

There was no point in wishing I had chosen a different mug, or kicking myself for picking up the one I had; after all, there was no way I could have known then, and as part of Ozpin's philosophy of a holistic education, he made it so that students had absolutely no choice about who they were going to be lumped with and forced to work with, for their mutual rise to glory at best, and their continued survival at the least.

So I sucked up the shock, the unease, and the worry; forced a smile on my face; and marched over to Velvet and Yatsuhashi as calmly and untroubled as I could. “Nothing eases tension quite like extending the olive branch first!” daddy always says.

Velvet tensed up even more as I came up. I kept on smiling and said, “Well, at the very least, we can skip the introductions, right?”

Unlike all the other times, I only made Velvet even more nervous and antsy. She mumbled something too quiet for me to hear before she slowly made her way behind Yatsuhashi. He and Fox, to their credit, didn't comment on the fact that our team hadn't even officially existed for more than a minute and _already_ we were experiencing drama and problems that threatened our ability to cooperate, let alone coexist.

I desperately wanted to ask Velvet what it was I had done wrong exactly, but an auditorium full of other people wasn't the best place to have an intervention. Besides that, A student volunteer was ushering us to the side of the stage, our mugs were taken away to sit on a table nearby, and our names and faces started to come up on the giant screen up above.

In spite of the friction between us, we all marched to the stage and stood in line in front of Ozpin, heads up (and in Velvet's case, ears up) as was proper. “Coco Adel, Fox Alistair, Velvet Scarlatina, and Yatsuhashi Daichi,” he said. “You four had collected the topaz coffee mugs, and from this day forth, you will work together as team CVFY, led by: Coco Adel.”

After the initial shock earlier, this one didn't quite faze me as much. There was a distinct air of worry and concern between the four of us, but I kept my cool, and the rest also made like nothing was wrong. We stepped off the stage, and Velvet's ears drooped straight back down.

Becoming leader was almost as bad as being teamed up with Velvet in the first place, but I couldn't do anything about it; shirking off the responsibility to someone else meant doing something so catastrophic or so incompetent that losing my position would be the _least_ of my worries.

We got handed back our mugs, and inspiration struck. I raised it into the air, the yellow glow still bright and brilliant as earlier. “A toast to our new team! May the next four years be as great as we were back in the Emerald Forest.”

In spite of his lack of sight, Fox raised his up to mine, Yatsuhashi joined after, and after some expectant and encouraging looks from the three of us, Velvet put hers up, too. We clinked mugs and I took a sip of my coffee.

It was then that I learned that Oobleck's personal blend was probably a great substitute for liquid dust fuel, and proceeded to spit it back out hacking, choking, and sticking my tongue out from the bitter trauma.

Fox had the good sense not to actually drink his, while Velvet and Yatsuhashi had the good sense to just stick with hot chocolate. I groaned, then Velvet handed her mug to Yatsuhashi before disappearing into the crowd. She returned moments later carrying two fistfuls of creamer and sugar, one for each hand, along with a little plastic stirrer. She smiled uneasily at me as held them out, like I was a dangerous predator whose territory she had just accidentally found herself in, and she was now trying to offer me a gift to placate me.

I smiled and took most of them. “Thanks, Velvet.” I said before I started ripping the tops off with my teeth and pouring every single one of those packets into my coffee.

“You're welcome.” Velvet replied, smiling back for the briefest moment before she hid behind Yatsuhashi once more.

Even after all that creamer and sugar, Oobleck's coffee was still incredibly powerful and more akin to _several_ bricks to the face than something you should be consuming in the first place. I choked it down to the last drop anyway; even if my body was telling me to _stop for all that is good and holy,_ showing that Velvet's offering wasn't in vain seemed to fix things between us, however little.

* * *

Beacon Academy dormitories are notoriously cramped, just like every other Vale school out there with few exceptions. Though not as spartan and “space-efficient” as Vacuo's infamous “holes in the walls,” it was a far cry from the more generous accommodations of Mistral, and it didn't have the advantage of Atlas' famous space-saving technologies.

There were inevitably lots of documented and hearsay tales of _what_ exactly students had done with the space they were given, from elevating the art of packing, stacking objects, and interior design to never-before seen heights out of necessity; creative solutions to maximize all space, horizontal _and_ vertical; to the more infamous examples where students had simply made their own extra space, often to the detriment of their neighbours, the building's structural integrity, or the inhabitants themselves.

We were going to be having none of that drama with our dorm, however: Velvet had packed a single suitcase of clothes, equipment, and sentimental keepsakes; Yatsuhashi had a single large rucksack that fit neatly under his bed; and all of Fox's belongings fit into a single knapsack.

Most people would be embarrassed at being the odd one out, with their tons of luggage stacked, compacted, and taking up a good eighth of the room and one of the desks, but then again, most people were not aware of just how important being well-dressed was, or just didn't have the resources for it. Besides, the only concern the others had was that I keep the paths mostly clear, so everything worked out just fine in that issue.

I did an accounting of all my belongings—I knew every single item and article of clothing I had packed by heart—and to my relief and delight, found every single one of them where I had left them. (Student luggage was usually not a prime target except for wallets and expensive scroll models, but mine had designer handbags, handcrafted shoes, and limited edition jewelry.) I decided to put them away tomorrow; the sun was starting to set, I was starting to feel the drain of fighting Grimm and trudging through the Emerald Forest for most of that morning, and I was filthy, muddy, and a little scorched from said fighting and trudging.

“Anyone going to need the bathroom?” I asked as I retrieved a towel, my pajamas, and nightcap. “I need a _long_ shower.”

All three of my teammates said no. Yatsuhashi busied himself with polishing and whetting his sword; Fox settled himself on his bed and started meditating; Velvet set her box down on a desk, retrieved a set of raw dust crystals and tools from her luggage, and went to work rearming that box of hers.

I headed to the bathroom, stripped off my clothes, and examined myself in the mirror. About the only injury of note was a burnt patch of hair and the empty space where the curly, dyed lock on the front of my face _used_ to be. I let out a depressed sigh--I don't care if you call me vain or say I was overreacting, that little curl had been the result of several months work of work, patience, and some very expensive, high quality hair colouring products.

My ears and tails had come out uninjured though, there was that. I stepped into the shower, and spent a few therapeutic minutes just letting the hot water wash over me and soak me completely. Then, I shut it off, and started thinking as I soaped and shampooed.

Something would have to be done about Velvet. First up, her affinity for raw dust was just _too_ good and _too_ powerful—though it was great for killing Grimm, most hunters, huntresses, and civilians preferred friendly fire and collateral damage to a minimum. If her spur-of-the-moment fireball combined with Fox's semblance could make that apocalypse earlier, how much more catastrophic would a deliberately planned attack be?

I didn't come into Beacon expecting to miraculously make it out of every scrape unharmed or just scratched, but the injuries I had in mind were “cuts,” “bruises,” and “broken bones,” not “charred to a crisp,” “electrocuted to near-death,” or “trapped in a powerful gust that _definitely_ doesn't lend itself to cheeky photographs and playful smiles.” And that wasn't even going into how easily my secret would get blown if I _did_ get hurt that badly…

I shuddered, my ears instinctively flattening and my tail hiding between my legs.

I moved onto the second concern: what it was exactly that she was doing to me, and why it had me so completely stumped. In hindsight, it was obvious, but then the only thing I knew about it was that being with her made me feel inexplicably happy and irrationally driven to protect her—among other... impulses…

I shook my head and quickly moved onto the third, and by far the most important issue: our team, and how we'd work together, especially because I was the leader. I had no doubts I could fight well with Fox and Yatsuhashi, but Velvet was a huge question. Though we did well in the Emerald Forest, how would we fare in future fights? Especially if we didn't solve break this tension between us? Much as people were encouraged to separate their personal lives and professional lives, it was a difficult thing to do when you never really clocked out.

Ultimately, I decided to think of solutions come morning, _after_ I'd had some time to let the emotions fade, let subjective thinking do its thing, and most importantly, gotten some sleep. I rinsed myself off, toweled off—taking special care to completely dry my tail and my ears, last thing I needed was a suspicious wet line down the inside of my pant-leg—and dressed up.

After a double-check in the mirror to see if my nightcap was on snug, my ears were hidden, and my pajama pants didn't betray the tail stuffed underneath, I stepped out of the bathroom, feeling much more relaxed, much more confident, and much more capable of handling whatever it is that came my way.

Fox was still in that meditative position, and didn't bother to break out of it to acknowledge me. Yatsuhashi had moved on to mending his armour and sealing all the gashes from Grimm attacks; he put his sewing needle in his teeth to give me a small wave. Velvet's ears perked, before she quickly put away whatever it was she was doing into two separate boxes and stepped up to me.

We were a polite few feet away from each other, but Velvet still acted like we were mere inches away from each other and I had her back to the wall, while I internally panicked and turned a little red in the cheeks. She looked me in the eyes, and with my sunglasses off, I suddenly felt painfully exposed and vulnerable. It was difficult to tell a Faunus from a human by their eyes alone, but it was _possible..._

Velvet's gaze quickly darted to the floor. “I… can we… are you…?” She trailed off.

I didn't finish her sentence for her, much as I was sure what it was going to be.

After a few more moments of struggling to say something, Velvet awkwardly thumbed to our closet door. “Can we talk…? … Alone...?” She asked.

“Sure.” I said to Velvet, even though that was about the last thing I wanted to do.

I was a leader now, I told myself. And obviously, the tough decisions were only _just_ getting started.


	8. Chapter 8

“Do you hate me?”

Velvet asked it so casually, like she was just wondering what was the special for the cafeteria that day. I had to take a few moments just to get to grips with it; mother and daddy had drilled in me that _how_ someone said something could tell quite a lot more than _what_ they said, and what I got from it was a very depressing message indeed.

Though that was certainly an important problem that needed dealing with, right now, I needed to figure out how exactly to answer her without somehow making this situation even worse—forget sticks and stones, words could cut _far_ deeper and hurt _much_ worse than they ever could.

I took account of the situation: we were both alone in the closet, the door shut but no lock, but neither Fox nor Yatsuhashi likely to open it or listen in, either. It _was_ a walk-in with a reasonable allowance of closet space for four students, but it was still pretty cramped, only a few feet between the two of us.

Or maybe that was just me, and the animal part of my brain was making things seem even more claustrophobic than it really was. I was a predator—if I were stuck in a closed off space with another being, and there was nowhere to run, there were exactly two automatic responses: one, I had cornered my prey and was moving in for the kill; or two, _I_ was the one who'd been trapped and now needed to fight for my life.

Instinct couldn't decide whether to fight or flee; rationality couldn't figure out what to do that'd make things better or at least buy me some more time; and all the while, the look on Velvet's face fell, her ears drooped again, and this hole I'd found myself in just kept getting deeper and deeper.

Somewhere inside my mind, where all things that were second nature or had been _thoroughly_ hammered into me were stored, a helpful bit of my daddy's advice came screaming at me: “When in doubt, _for the love of all that is good and holy,_ **ask questions.”**

“Why would you think that?” I finally blurted out.

Velvet paused. Like she'd been expecting “Yes” or “No,” that this question was as simple as 1+1=2, but the result turned out to be “purple.” She paused to think; I could have used the time to formulate some hastily concocted excuse or an acceptable answer, but instead, I watched her, looking at the expressions on her face change as she wrapped her head around my words.

“Well…” she mumbled, “back at the team ceremony… when you saw we had the same mug, you kinda… freaked out really badly.”

“You could tell?” I asked in all honesty. “Even with the sunglasses, _really?”_

Velvet frowned, looked down at the floor, and nodded meekly.

I mentally kicked myself in the rear as I realized it sounded like I was implying that she was lying. I quickly added, “I mean, they're reflective, it'd be pretty hard to tell what I was thinking...”

“I was watching your body language,” Velvet explained. “You don't express much of… anything... so it's really easy to tell when something's bothering you...”

The revelation hit me like Oobleck's coffee, black: _of course_ she would do that. She was a rabbit Faunus, a prey species; you didn't look in a predator's eyes unless you wanted to know which of you was the first course, you looked at the rest of their body, noticed all the little tics and tiny movements as muscles clenched, ears turned, and their cool, relaxed attitude suddenly turned tense and wary.

I resolved to be a little more expressive and normal from now on, because _obviously_ maintaining a facade of cool disinterest would only work if I could keep it up 24/7—and as Fox had shown me, it takes a particularly rare breed of person to be able to be perennially stone-faced and completely unfazed by anything.

“Velvet--” I stopped myself too late.

Velvet looked up, eyeing me curiously, ears up and ready to hear what it is I had to say—too bad I still hadn't thought of it yet.

Time was of the essence; take a little too long to reply, or be a little too quick to respond, my message would get garbled, ruined, or taken more suspiciously and warily than I'd like.

So I decided to bypass that problem and do something that Velvet couldn't possibly misinterpret: I stepped up to her, put my hands on both her shoulders, and looked her straight in the eyes as I spoke. “I don't hate you, alright?” I said. “I'll admit I'm not _entirely_ 100% on-board with the idea of us being teammates, and _especially_ me being your leader… but trust me, it is absolutely _not_ because I hate you.” I smiled for good measure.

Velvet stared blankly at me, as if she couldn't quite process what I had just said. I assumed she was either surprised that someone _didn't_ hate her, or that she was shocked and confused about what she thought I actually felt about her, as if she couldn't believe I could feel that way about her.

I found myself staring into those big, chocolate brown eyes of hers, all terribly confused, then at the rest of her face, all scrunched up in a mixture of unease and shock, not necessarily the bad kind. I smiled a little wider as I found myself enjoying the sights a little _too_ much. “It's getting late, Velvet, and it's been a long day for all of us; I'd like to get some sleep now.” I said quickly. Then I realized I was still holding her and took my hands back just as fast.

Velvet blinked, blushed, and nodded. “Okay… sorry about this.”

“Nothing to be sorry about Velvet!” I said as I swiftly spun around on my heel and headed to the door. “We're teammates now, and I'm your leader; whatever it is you have to tell me? I _swear_ I will listen.”

I opened the door and Velvet quickly stepped out and went straight back to her desk, head down. I shut it after me and marched straight to my new bed, hurriedly settling in to avoid questions and actually get to sleep.

To Fox and Yatsuhashi's credit, they didn't shoot us knowing looks or tease us,  even if we could tell that they suspected something  _very_ different from the reality had  happened  in that closet, however fleetingly .

* * *

Early morning the next day. Sun still wasn't going to be up for a few hours, and majority of the student population along with it, but for me, it was time to start the day.

I retrieved my uniform and went into the bathroom as quietly as I could; there wasn't any more of that rush now that it was just the four of us sharing it, but it was still no excuse to wake up the others with my morning routine nor make an opportunity for Bathroom Use Wars. (You may think I'm joking, but if you've ever had several siblings or roommates and a distinct lack of bathrooms when most of you _really_ need them, you will know those things can turn ugly—if not now, then later, when the resentment reaches critical mass.)

As was going to become a daily ritual, I spent my morning shower planning, reflecting, and thinking. I realized that aside from dealing with our first day of classes today, I was going to have to get all of us in a training room, see the full extent of our abilities and plot some maneuvers and actual tactics before we had another actual fight on our hands. We were all more than able to handle ourselves and work together on the fly, that much was certain; however, I'd like to prevent accidentally causing quite a significant sum of collateral damage, leveling structures around us, and almost getting ourselves and the people we were supposed to protect killed and/or horrifically injured—I had this feeling they wouldn't look very good on our records.

After that, it was time to find ways to get Velvet comfortable around me, then trust me. My personal stake in it aside, I had an obligation to make our team the best it could be, and doubtless, it'd be a huge help to Velvet herself, too. I thought of accompanying her to class, coming to her defense if someone bothered or bullied her, and of course, helping her out in matters of academics and hunting.

But that was par for the course with teams and their leaders, I realized; whatever their personal feelings with the members themselves, hunter/huntress teams always passed or failed the entire year as one, with few exceptions. I needed to go _beyond_ that. I needed to do something that'd show Velvet I cared, that I was willing to go out of my way for her, and apologize for my reluctance to be partnered with her.

The answer was obvious: clothes. I remembered Velvet's suitcase—it was highly unlikely that she had many outfits packed there, and I was certain that they were all copies of the same thing or of the same general style. Did she even have a little black dress, literally speaking or just an outfit for a fancy evening out? Not to mention shoes to match the occasion. What about casual events, or even daily wear? Was she just going to wear the same two outfits over and over again, day-in, day-out?

Okay, I'll admit I was planning to do the same with that last one, but that was only because I needed to be combat ready at any given moment—I didn't want to have to rush to an emergency and have to spend a crucial five minutes changing or worse yet, throwing more armoured clothing over my current outfit.

I shuddered at the mere thought of it.

That still wouldn't excuse Velvet not having something to wear for special occasions or a night out on the town, however. What about the annual dances? What about parties, both the events we'd be forced to attend for whatever reason, and the ones we chose to by our own volition? I was starting to realize that with the way Velvet had acted so far and what she brought with her, she was probably planning to spend almost all her time her in Beacon, holed up and alone or with just us her teammates, only ever going out to Vale to go buy supplies and groceries, or just to keep herself from going stir crazy.

And that just _would not do_. I needed to go take Velvet shopping sometime soon, all on my tab, both as a gesture of goodwill, courtesy, and the fact that I was planning to get her the best of best. Mother wouldn't think twice about writing the checks or paying the bills; even if we weren't teammates, she'd think it even more of a tragedy and urgent crisis than I would.

That was one thing down. But I decided I still needed to do more than that, and the answer was just as obvious as the first: give Velvet a reason to use those clothes, maybe coercing her to come with me to events. Don't get me wrong, I wasn't about to go drag Velvet kicking and screaming with me to every single party I could find—even daddy had her limits and standards of whose events she'd willingly spend her precious time with—but she just couldn't spend her whole life never attending a party, and she didn't strike me as the kind of person who really _was_ happier just cloistered away with their solitary past-time of choice, such as writers.

Failing that, I figured we could just dress up in our best outfits and go strolling through Vale, catching eyes, relishing the attention, and just enjoying each other's company on a slow, lazy weekend. I found I _really_ rather liked that idea, more than the parties—it'd be easier, more private, and I'd assume, more enjoyable for the both of us.

But then I realized all of those plans assumed that Velvet would agree to go out with me in the first place, so it might not have been so prudent to plan a shopping trip right now, or figured out which social events she'd agree to go to. My plans on hold for the moment, I finished up the rest of my shower and dressed up, then busied myself with an equally pressing, and much more urgent matter:

Reading up on my books, and getting all of my pens, cards, and notebooks ready for class that day. I _was_ here to learn, after all.

A few hours later, my teammates woke up. They spent most of their time getting ready for class like I did, storing away their things, or helping me plot and fill almost every inch of our shared closet with my things. I mad a note to get them all something nice for letting me use their spare space, even if they really weren't likely to need it within the next four years.

We were all dressed up, presentable, and ready with more than enough time for breakfast if we wanted some. I took advantage of our efficiency and assembled the others in front of me. “I want all of us in the training rooms after class, no excuses;” I said. “We seriously need to get a grip on our strengths, our weaknesses, and how to wreck Grimm without wrecking everything else around us.”

The others agreed wholeheartedly. Then, I looked at Velvet, and lowered my sunglasses. “And _you,_ Velvet, are coming with me after we're done;” I continued. “We have some things we need to discuss.”

Velvet's eyes widened in surprise and a bit of fear, before she obediently nodded.

We double-checked our schedules before leaving; our whole team was going to be together for the entire morning before we were with just our partners for all the afternoon. Absolutely nothing left to do inside but loiter and contemplate our navels, we set out of our dorm and to class, myself leading the way. I walked proudly with my head held up high, confident that my beret was going to keep hiding my ears, my thigh-high stockings and their pattern wouldn't betray the tail stuffed down there, and that today was going to be a productive and normal, if mundane and maybe a little boring day of learning and training.

… And then Velvet's locker exploded, and everything went to hell once more.


	9. Chapter 9

“Man, you think you can trust the Faunus, and then something like this happens...” Someone muttered—I didn't bother finding out who, to avoid feeling the desire to murder them.

“You think she was planning to do this all the way back from the start?” Another asked, more curious than anything else.

“Definitely!” A third voice chimed. “She's an undercover White Fang agent, I just know it! Those guys keep yelling about equality and discrimination, but they should really stop blowing up us innocent civilians if they _really_ want it!”

I growled, tearing out my claws from deep in the underside of our table. I pushed myself up, and felt one of Yatsuhashi's massive hands on my shoulder pushing me straight back down. He grunted softly, something I took to mean, “Ignore them and eat your lunch.”

I scowled at him, but he just kept his eyes on his meal. Fox did the same. I looked down at my food, grabbed my fork and knife, and forced myself to start eating it.

“All those Faunus should just be banned from Beacon...” Someone grumbled. “They're like wild animals on two feet, we should just keep them where they belong: the zoo.”

My hands tightened on my utensils, claws digging into my palms. I'd have loved to hold whoever had said those words responsible for them, but a quick glance showed that they were well out of hearing range— _human_ hearing range, that is.

I'd finally had enough of this. I grabbed my tray, ready to leave the dining hall, and prepared to launch my food straight in Yatsuhashi's face if he tried to stop me again. At the same time all the way over at the main entrance, all conversation screeched to a halt as people started shushing each other and fleeing the center aisle.

Velvet cut a path straight down the middle of the crowds, leaving behind staring eyes, silent mouths, and wary looks in her wake. I could have taken that opportunity to yell at all those students—cowards, all of them, declaring someone guilty until proven innocent, insulting them, and demonizing them but only from the safety of behind their subject's back and while they can't hear them. Instead, I dropped my tray, got out of my seat, and rushed straight to Velvet's side, Yatsuhashi and Fox following soon after. She had kept her head down when she entered the cafeteria, and only raised it to see who was coming up to her instead of going away. We greeted each other with curt nods, short grunts, and no smiles; me at the lead, Yatsuhashi behind me, Velvet by his leg, and Fox bringing up the rear, the three of us escorted her to our table, the one at the very corner surrounded by conspicuously empty seats and tables.

We sat down, I wordlessly slid my tray over to Velvet, food untouched, utensils still clean but for my fingerprints. She halved my lunch, slid them apart with a noticeable gap in the middle, then handed the knife back to me. I refused it started digging into my share with my bare hands—it'd give me something safe to tear apart and shred before I shoved it into my mouth then chewed it into littler pieces.

Velvet looked at me strangely for a moment, before she decided not to question it and ate her share.

No matter how much Velvet wanted to spend the rest of the day holed up in our dorm room, no matter how much I wanted to be there with her just in case, and no matter how little either of our appetites were, we were still required to attend our afternoon classes.

* * *

Group training that day was skipped—we couldn't do it with Velvet unarmed, and because her weapon was the majority of the explosion, Beacon decided to withhold supplying her with raw dust so she could rearm herself. Fox and Yatsuhashi busied themselves in the gym instead, while Velvet and I headed back to our dorm room, her head down, my arm around her shoulder, and harsh glares for anyone that so much as looked at her.

Velvet curled up into a ball on her bed as soon as she could, pillow hugged close to her chest. I locked the door, shut the windows, and pulled over the curtains. She looked so helpless, confused, and terrified at that moment, I almost left her alone to cower and weep, but Glynda Goodwitch was going to take her sweet time releasing the official incident report, and all the slander and wild speculation had only made me more desperate for the truth.

I stood a fair distance from her. “Velvet… what happened?”

Velvet buried her face into her pillow. “I don't want to talk about it.”

Once more, I debated leaving her alone, but instead, I walked up to the side of her bed, and knelt down on the floor, my face level with hers. “Velvet, please: tell me what happened.” I said softy. “I just want to help you.”

Velvet warily brought her face out of her pillow. I could see her eyes were wet and already turning an unflattering shade of red. On a whim, I took off my sunglasses and let the both of us look straight into each other's eyes—that moment, I didn't care if she could find out I was a Faunus.

Velvet looked away, staring intently at the depression in her pillow. “… Someone tried to pull a prank on me...” she mumbled.

The rest of the story, save for word choice and a few minor details, was basically the same as the official report released days later after due process ran its course: a member of one of the more moronic and destructive unofficial student organizations on campus decided to plant a gunk bomb in a freshman's locker, as part of their initiation. “Extra points” were to be given for particularly dramatic reactions, or targeting certain students the senior members would love to see victimized, and who fit both bills but Velvet, a Faunus, at the very bottom of the social ladder, and has shown on numerous occasions her tendency to panic in the face of (social) trouble?

Normally, this would have been one of the less destructive pranks; though it was an explosive, it was barely enough to seriously injure someone, and the worst effects of the gunk it'd spread was that it loved to seep into sensitive mechanisms, hard-to-reach areas, and was incredibly hard to scrub off or required several baths in powerful detergents and corrosives.

Unfortunately, it was late last night when Velvet had stored her box full of volatile dust crystals into her locker, she'd forgotten to lock the chest itself, and our prankster had the brilliant idea of tossing the bomb into it without stopping to look at what was inside first.

The box took the brunt of the blast, but Velvet's locker door still ended up blowing right off, and flames, an electrical storm, high-speed gales, and other unpleasant weather came pouring right out soon after. The cameras there caught a lot of screaming, a lot of running, and a lot of panic before they were taken out by a stray bolt, their lens were burned useless, or they were blown right off their perch.

As soon as Velvet finished telling me the story, I immediately rushed over to my bags and pulled out my emergency stash of chocolate—and trust me, that was some _very_ good chocolate I only pulled out for the very worst of situations. I came back to her side, laid it on her bed and gingerly pushed it forward.

Velvet looked at it, then carefully pulled it towards her. “Thank you.” She said softly.

“You're welcome.” I said, before before I headed off to my desk, and busied myself with schoolwork. I'd done all that I could to help Velvet for the moment, and now the only sensible thing to do was deal with all the other problems in my life while I waited for Goodwitch's decision about what would happen to our prankster and Velvet.

… And when I found out, I got even angrier than I was in the cafeteria with all those cowardly students—in fact, one of the few times in my entire life I'd ever been that outraged.

“She what?!” I screamed.

Velvet cringed, I balled my fists as I forced myself to calm down—“Don't shoot the messenger” was a very hard lesson to put into practice. I shut my mouth, using my eyes and my hands to ask her to say it again.

Velvet looked at me cautiously; I tried to keep myself looking as—well, if not calm, then not quite _murderously_ outraged—as I could. “… They suspended her, they're cracking down on the gang she was trying to join, and I got new dust crystals and materials to make a new box...” She mumbled. “… Plus, she said she was sorry...”

From the tone she used, I doubt it was a very sincere one. Too bad I couldn't do anything about hooligans being hooligans. “Couldn't they have at least paid you for your work?" I asked. "The trauma? The effort you're going to have to go through to build that new box and fill it up with crystals again?”

Velvet looked down. “Goodwitch said they 'couldn't quantify the cost of experimental technology crafted by students'…” A very long, telling pause. “… And I didn't want to bother.”

I scowled. “I'm going to Goodwitch.” I growled as I headed to the closet door.

Velvet grabbed my arm. “Coco, please, you don't have to--”

I immediately snapped my head back to her. “Yes, I do!” I yelled. “Because you know why, Velvet? You deserve better than this; no one should be able to do something this despicable to you and get away that lightly!”

Velvet stopped, stunned.

“Let go of my arm, please.” I growled softly.

Velvet carefully took her hand back, I stormed out the closet, our room, and down the halls, to Goodwitch's office. It was all but inevitable I'd remember that event scarred in my mind, the one that showed me just how bad Faunus racism could be, and made me hate it as much as I did today…

* * *

I replayed the clip over and over again, as if somehow, it would play out differently.

Nazahah stepped out onto the stage, looking absolutely stunning in her silk red dress with the gold embroidery, her head of luxurious ebony curls gleaming in the light. The cheer and roar of her fans was deafening, declarations of love and praise drowning in the sheer volume of it all. She didn't even flinch from the auditory assault that must have been, instead smiling and waving to her audience.

She stepped out onto the center of the stage, down a runway and about as close as she or the audience were going to get to each other for reasons of security. She gave one last smile, the music started, and she opened her mouth to sing. Before she gets even a single note out, from the audience flies a dark, heavy object, one that hits Nazahah square on the head. She crumples onto her knees, clutching her new head wound; the cameras zoom in to show in great detail the blood pouring out onto her hands and staining her hair red.

In the background, the music stops, replaced by the sounds of screaming and violence.

Like most people, I woke up and decided to check the news and see what happened to Nazahah's opening night, seeing as I was in bed well before her makeup artists had finished their final preparations for the show. It was well before daybreak when I first watched it, then replayed it again and again.

Mother was awake then, but she spent her early mornings completely engrossed in work, no gadgets, no news, and nothing from the outside world, just her, her “Sanctuary of Silence”, and the fabrics, the designs, and the tools that filled every inch of it. Daddy was still sleeping, and wasn't due to check up on me until _long_ after I'd scarred myself quite a good bit.

She knew something was wrong even before she opened the door when she found me sitting on my bed, a blank look in my eyes, my scroll in my lap, horrible noises coming out of the device in between my pressing the replay button.

“Coco, sugar, what are you watching?”

I paused the video. I raised my scroll up to daddy, pressed the play button, and showed her what happened.

Immediately after, daddy put the scroll away, sat down with me, and held me close.

I buried my face in her chest and started crying.


	10. Chapter 10

“… I understand the entire Faunus community wants me to speak up on the incident, offer my two cents on it, or have some words for my heckler and the other people that don't like me quite a bit, but please, I'd love it if we could all just move on. The many, many, _many_ witnesses have already submitted their accounts, there's video evidence, and I'm sure my heckler will go straight to prison as soon as they get out of the hospital. The media, and my fans have also been pretty good at writing and talking about everything anything there is to say about this incident, so I really don't see the point of adding to it.” Nazahah said.

The interviewer looked disappointed. Like every other earlier, every other incident in Nazahah's career, she released only the facts, and never gave the press any kinds of quotes or claims that could be used to extend the story's run time, and rile up some sales and page views with good old moral outrage. Still, her interviewer wasn't paid to respect her privacy, and so they kept on baiting and fishing.

“As you wish, Ms. Karim. It's interesting to note that as of this moment, your concerts for later tonight and tomorrow evening haven't been canceled; has the official announcement just been delayed, or are you still going to perform as scheduled?”

Nazahah smiled. “A little bit of both, you could say; I am most _definitely_ going to be on that stage tonight and tomorrow evening, and I am most _definitely_ going to give a show that'll be more than worth the money, the time, and effort everyone's put into making it happen.” She turned to the camera. “And to all my fans out there: I would absolutely _love_ it if all of you can come and see me there in person, though we will be setting up a free livestreaming on both nights. I understand why you'd have a reason to stay and watch from the comfort of your homes, but I _really_ want to see all your faces while I'm up there on stage; it's one of the biggest reasons that I've keep on singing for all these years, and trust me, I _will_ do my best to make it worth your whiles.” She winked.

Daddy took on a simultaneously unshakably determined and unbelievably excited expression. Mother scowled at her, but decided to address it later, when the live interview was over. I kept on watching the screen, completely focused.

“That's a very bold move, Ms. Karim!”

Nazahah laughed. “Well, I'm making a very bold statement: you _can_ shut me up, but I _won't_ stay quiet for very long.” She grinned.

“Aren't you concerned about your injury, Ms. Karim?”

Nazahah rolled her eyes. “Oh, not this again—it bled worse than it actually was, _alright?_ I know it was anarchy last night when everyone thought they'd just witnessed a murder live and on international broadcast, but that's timing and stage production for you. Kudos to all my stage hands, by the way!” She chuckled. "I'm still going to perform, and I'm still going to give my fans as much of what they want as I can give—about the only difference now is that I'll be wearing this instead of letting my hair down.” She pointed up at the elegant scarf she'd tied around her head to hide the bandages. “Shame, really; it's as much my favourite style as my signature look.”

The interviewer nodded. “Will there be any added security measures in light of the incident?”

“No, though if everyone could please not bring anything that's light enough to throw, but with sharp edges or just enough weight to make a nice projectile, I'm sure security will appreciate it, and you'll save yourselves a lot of hassle, too.” Nazahah smirked.

“Really? No fences? Deflector fields? Added security guards?”

“Yes, no, no, and barely enough to be noticeable. If they start putting up walls between me and my audience, I will be the first one to call for their removal, believe you me.” Nazahah growled. “You call it 'just being safe,' I call it 'blatant distrust.' I _know_ I'll be safe around my fans, and if a different heckler just happens to slip in and does something again? I trust that they'll handle it quite nicely before letting security take over, just like last night.

“If any one person from the audience wants to give me a high five while I'm performing? I will give them one. Anyone wants to climb up on stage and sing with me? I'll personally be the one to help me up. And if they want me to jump off the stage, into the audience, and go crowd surfing?” She grinned. “Well, who am I to say no to that?”

The interviewer nodded politely. “I'm afraid we're just about of time, Ms. Karim; are there any parting words you'd like to share with our audience?”

“Yes.” Nazahah turned to the cameras. “To my fans who've been cheated out of my opening night: I'll make it up to you all, I promise. And to my fans who're going to come to my concert tonight and tomorrow: I just can't _wait_ to see you all when I finally step out on stage.” She beamed.

“And I'm sure they can't wait to see you, either! Nazahah Karim, everyone!”

Before they could switch back to the regular celebrity news, mother shut off the screen, and turned to daddy with a deep scowl on her face. “I'm coming with you tonight.” She said—not “If you're still going tonight, I'm coming with you.” because it was very clear that little was going to be able to stop her.

Daddy nodded, pleased. “I'll call up potential babysitters right now!” She reached into her pocket.

“I'm going, too!” I cried.

Mother's head whipped to me. Daddy's scroll slipped out of her hand.

“Nazahah wants me to be there, so I will.” I added with the simple, unshakeable conviction only a child could have.

Mother stared at me, horror on her face. Though it pained me to see her like that, I kept my expression as hard and determined as I could. Daddy looked up at her, and gave her a little nod, the kind she always did when mother was on the precipice of a big decision she'd rather not make.

Mother sighed. “Oh, alright—but, on one condition...”

* * *

We came an hour earlier than we were supposed to. The closer it came to show time, the more people were going to be arriving, which meant crowding and noise, and my mother would always despise both.

As of that moment, the venue was barely half-full, mostly filled with early protesters and fans setting up their displays to show their support for Nazahah's bravery, their love for her work, and/or vindicate her hecklers and any other Faunus racists out there who might be listening. After going through the usual checklist whenever we were at public events—find out where the concessionaires are located; take any necessary bathroom trips; warily watch out for potential child kidnappers, molesters, and/or murderers; survey the joint for any suspicious activity; plan an escape route in case of stampede or yet other crowd-antagonizing incident; and find out where the auxiliary or lesser known souvenir booths were so we could minimize waiting in line—we settled ourselves at a quiet, out of the way corner, a happy family of three with me safely behind my parents legs, hands in my parents' own; daddy casually passing the time people watching, commenting and complimenting them on their appearances, and the little things happening around us; and mother glowering at and intimidating anyone who so much as accidentally glanced at me for half-a-second.

On my part, I shrank back as far as I dared and kept myself as innocuous as I could. Like that fateful day just a week or so ago, my ears were hidden by a beret, and my tail with a long dress; unlike that day, I was doing everything I could to keep them both under cover, moving as little as possible. With the twisted, faulty logic of kids who don't know any better, I thought that being almost perfectly still but ready to bolt at any given second would be the inauspicious, normal, unremarkable behaviour of someone who was definitely just there to watch a concert and enjoy themselves.

Suddenly, a commotion. The relatively sparse crowds of people started swarming around a single, moving spot; security became that much more alert and ready; and both my and mother's ears perked as our tails warily rose up. We were too far away to see what was going on in the center of that mess, and even if we were close enough to peek over the crowd's shoulders, none of us were going to risk being that close to a moving mass of uncoordinated bodies. The screaming, the yelling, and the general hysteria was extra assurance that it was best to stay behind and watch.

Finally, after what seemed like forever, the people in the swarm moved away or parted, steadily making a path out for whoever or whatever was inside. Mother's grip on my hand tightened; the rake of her sharp, well-manicured claws on my skin was made me feel strangely safer. A break in the crowd formed, and out strode the cause of all that excitement.

My eyes widened. Daddy gasped. Mother blinked, then blinked again.

Nazahah Karim calmly strode away from her beloved fans, already dressed up in her outfit for the show, a different but still stunning dress like last night, with an equally luxurious scarf around her head and over bandages, and her luxurious brown curls worn up. Even if she didn't have the advantage of make-up, her jewelry, and stage lights and effects, seeing her live and in-person was far more stunning and breathtaking than seeing her through a scroll screen.

We all realized she was coming right for us. I kept on staring, while daddy suddenly let go of my hand to latch herself onto mother's arm. _“Hold me,”_ she whispered.

Nazahah was now  a few feet away from us, myself and daddy had lost the ability to do anything but stare and wonder if this was all an elaborate, very vivid dream. She smiled—a calm, relaxed, unfettered grin with a flash of pearly white sharp teeth, and just the slightest droop of her eyelids—and suddenly I found myself suffering from some strange, inexplicable ailment that made it difficult to make coherent thoughts, stand up straight, and not look completely, absolutely dumbstruck.

“Mrs. Adel!” Nazahah cried, before she did a small bow. “Fancy meeting you here! Thank you for coming here to see me tonight, and bringing your family along, too! It means a lot to me.”

Mother smiled back and mirrored her bow. “You're very welcome, Ms. Karim, though I have to confess, most of the gratitude should be for my daughter and my wife.” She gestured to us with her head, what with my iron grip on her hand, and daddy choking the life out of her other arm. “They're very huge fans of you—well, my wife is, but it seems my daughter is starting to become one, too.”

Understatement at its finest right there.

Nazahah turned to daddy, and smiled. She made a noise—about the only word I could use to describe it. Then she looked down at me and cast that same smile. I made a similar, higher pitched noise, along with turning red in the cheeks.

“Well thank you both very much, then.” Nazahah said. “And speaking of being huge fans: I'm one for your work, Mrs. Adel. I've always wanted even just a single dress made by you, but I can never seem to chance on a time when you're free and I'm not so busy I can't even find time to get my measurements taken.”

Mother nodded sympathetically. “Isn't that always the way? You might be happy to hear that the rest of my night is free—if you can find me someplace nice, quiet, and private to do my work”--she cast a distasteful look at the quickly thickening crowds around us, with more on the way as people spread the news about the chance to meet Nazahah in person--”then I'm certain we can work out an agreement.”

Daddy's mouth turned into an “O.”

Nazahah purred. “ _Very_ happy indeed. Would you be fine working backstage, in my dressing room? It's got more than enough room for all four of us, I guarantee you that.”

Daddy's hand flew up to her cheek, she pinched herself, then started tugging it about in all sorts of angles for good measure. Nazahah and my mother ignored her.

“That'll be perfect.” Mother replied. “Shall we shake on it?” She jerked her caught arm about till she freed it from daddy's grip, then offered it to Nazahah.

She took it and flashed that grin again, quite a bit brighter than it was earlier. “Let's! Thank you, Mrs. Adel.”

“Please! It's Roja—Roja Naranja.” Mother said as they shook. “Seeing as everyone and their mother are so keen on just referring to you as just Nazahah.”

Nazahah chuckled. She offered her hand to daddy, who was now standing beside mother slack-jawed and stupefied. “And you would be?”

Daddy smartened up long enough to slowly, carefully shake Nazahah's hand as if it were an artefact sacred to millions, and say, “Saphira.” before quickly resuming her gawking.

Nazahah bent down on her knees, till our faces were level. My cheeks grew even hotter as she offered me her hand. “And you, little one?”

“Coco...” I whispered as I sheepishly took her hand and limply shook it. Though I'd been alive for less than a decade, my life then felt strangely complete.

Nazahah beamed. “Beautiful name for a beautiful girl.” She stood back up and bowed to us again. “Hope you all enjoy the show, and I'll expect to see you three backstage later! I'd love to stay and chat, but I promised myself I'd greet all of my fans personally if I could help it!” She gestured to the newcomers who were busy recording, chatting noisily, or pleasantly surprised to learn that her unplanned, spontaneous meet-and-greet wasn't a hoax and still ongoing.

“Oh, it's no trouble at all!” Mother replied. “Break a leg up there.”

“Thank you!” Nazahah smiled one last time, before she spun around and into the maw of a crowd that was patiently waiting for her to be done with us.

With her back turned, and even though she could still very much hear her, daddy broke out into hysterical screaming and started frantically jumping up and down. I had the sudden impulse to join her, but resisted it.

I didn't want my mother to have to deal with _two_ rabid fangirls at the same time.


	11. Chapter 11

The concert was _amazing_. If I enjoyed Nazahah's music from the best home entertainment system consumers could buy then, seeing her perform live was on a _whole other level._ The screaming, the passion, the atmosphere, both the audience and the performers just there to enjoy themselves, have fun, and make or listen to some _fantastic_ music—it was intoxicating.

I spent the entire show sitting on mother's shoulders, cheering as loud as I could and almost falling off several times if it weren't for her being the responsible one and keeping the both of us in check and our adjacent revelers from getting _too_ rowdy; even if my mother wasn't a big fan of random, sweaty, screaming strangers touching or hitting her, and I was supposed to be keeping my beret on and the skirt of my dress hiding my tail, I was still just a child and not quite as durable as the adults if push came to shove, or an arm went flying just a bit too far to the side, or the front.

Nazahah sang her songs while expertly maneuvering herself through all manner of props and elaborate set pieces, some resembling fancy, supersized cat Faunus playgrounds, others the few lush and verdant oases of her homeland of Vacuo, and one she publicly admitted was designed solely so she could “sing while getting shot at by flaming darts. It's _fun._ ”

There were powerful, rousing songs that got your blood pumping and tested the limits of Nazahah's lungs and vocal chords; there were somber dirges that brought you straight back down and to the brink of tears, if you weren't already sobbing; and then there was one particularly memorable moment where she let the entire crowd sing the intro of one of her most popular numbers, Nazahah herself just slowly striding the whole length of the stage, taking in all the happy faces and eager voices that were singing _her_ songs, grinning as wide as she could.

There were times when she called out and thanked members of the crowd for their enthusiasm; there were many times where she sang and _gave_ her fans high fives, knowing winks, or acknowledging looks; and there was the one moment where, in the middle of a particularly lively and acrobatic performance, she complimented one of her backup dancers on their tattoo before seamlessly proceeding to the next verse of her current song.

Cliche as it sounds, time just flew by, and to my dismay, it was all over too soon—but then again, isn't that always what happens with these things? The rain cloud over my head was quickly dispelled when several security guards broke off from ushering the crowds safely out and formed a barrier around us as we went against the tide of people, earning looks of curiosity, jealousy, and wonder the whole while.

I have to admit a serious, unabashedly selfish pleasure to being one of the lucky fans to have been _personally_ invited backstage.

Nazahah was waiting for us when we rounded the corner that separated the expertly crafted sets and stages and the unseen structures, systems, and people that made it and kept it running. To cut short an experience that was only really fun for me and my daddy, let's just say it was a lot of gawking, thanking, and excited tittering as we saw up close the various props, costumes, and a few backup dancers making their way through the many doors and rooms in the many halls.

It was great fun, one of the best times of my life, before I had a precocious realization that ruined the entire thing for me.

It came to me was when mother and Nazahah were off in a sectioned off area of her dressing room, heavy curtains and a sound dampening fence giving them all but complete privacy to take her measurements, brainstorm, and collaborate on what was going to be Nazahah's first Adel dress, custom made; daddy was off touching all of Nazahah's things (with her permission, mind you); and I was sitting back on a particularly luxurious pile of pillows and cushions imported straight from Vacuo.

I was in that state of mental limbo when you're not quite fully awake but not quite about to fall dead asleep yet, where your brain has lost most semblance of normal thought and the rigid systems, facts, and habits it was supposed to work in, yet it hadn't stopped producing coherent thoughts quite yet.

Somewhere, in that slurry of random thoughts, half-remembered memories, and almost completely free association, a link was established: I was backstage because Nazahah had personally came out to greet us, which she probably wouldn't have done if it weren't for the fact that someone attacked her during her opening night and caused the outrage, the panic, and the cancellation of said event.

Though I wasn't responsible for what happened, nor could I have done anything to stop it, I still ended up feeling incredibly, powerfully guilty and disgusted about it. Here I was, having the time of my life, all at the expense of all the fans who had paid, went to, and been denied Nazahah's opening night, not to mention the nasty cut she was still hiding underneath that head wrap of hers.

Being in that ambiguous state between awake and about-to-drop only made the unpleasant feelings in my stomach even worse.

It might have been shortly after or quite some time later when Nazahah finally stepped out of the curtains, a small, satisfied smile on her face, and mother hard at work with her notebook and her pencil sketching, writing, and designing. She didn't say a word as she closed the curtains behind her, isolating mother from the rest of the world yet again; it took an artist to know when an artist _absolutely_ did not and _should not_ be disturbed, I suppose.

I was still feeling terrible, but not so depressed that I didn't smile at seeing her face again. She was no less beautiful with her make-up gone, more casual and practical clothes on, and all her jewelry safely back in their lockboxes and velvet-lined pouches; only now, she exuded a more calm, relaxed, but still confident and proud aura, like a wild tiger at rest vs one on the hunt.

Daddy noticed her return, and carefully set down the dress she was lovingly pawing at, fitting it back into the rack of similarly relished outfits. (That particular piece was one of Nazahah's relatively simpler ones, a dark blue and form hugging number she had worn while she was getting shot with flaming darts both to minimize her chances of getting actually hit and set on fire, and most importantly, contrast beautifully with the orange of the flames.)

Like me, the joy of seeing her live, in person, and hanging out in her dressing room backstage hadn't yet worn off; unlike me, she was still very, very, _very_ vocal and eager to express it.

“I see you've been enjoying yourself.” Nazahah said with an amused smirk.

“I've touched _all_ of your things and it never stopped being _amazing,_ not even once _._ ” Daddy said serenely. _“Thank you.”_

Nazahah calmly waved her off. “Oh, it's no trouble; all these clothes are getting a thorough cleaning before getting sent to storage anyway, so why not?”

Daddy turned back to the rack of clothes and gave it a longing yet happy look, like she was seeing family and friends off at the airport after a brief but memorable reunion. She turned back to Nazahah and wiped the tears from her eyes. “Still, thank you. Oh, speaking of which, could you do me a favour?”

Nazahah shrugged. “Sure, what is it?”

“Can you please watch over Coco and point me to the nearest bathroom? I realize I haven't gone since before your concert started.”

That was three hours ago.

Nazahah smirked. “Down the hall, third to the left; there are signs, don't worry.”

“Thank you. You be a good girl now, Coco!” Daddy said, before she smoothly, gracefully made her way out of the dressing room before bolting down the hall.

Nazahah chuckled to herself before sitting down next to me. I was cross-legged to keep my tail coiled behind me and the skirt of my dress falling over it; she was stretching her whole body out, lounging on her side with her own tail idly swishing about on the side.

I unconsciously tensed up—both at the risk of discovery and this was the closest I'd been to Nazahah, _alone._ (Mother was technically there with us, but she was practically lost in her own world.)

“Enjoyed your very first concert, little one?” Nazahah purred, calm and unhurried.

“Yep.” I squeaked, hoping to sound completely honest and not the least bit nervous, and failing badly at both.

Nazahah frowned and pushed herself up. “Something bothering you, little one?”

_'You being really, really,_ really  _pretty, is what,'_ I thought, but since I was old enough to be more than a little hesitant to say that, I decided to tell her about the other thing bothering me: “Your fans. The ones that came to your show last night.”

Nazahah's tail flicked once to the side. Her expression lost all emotion for a few moments, her lip turning into a flat line and her half-lidded eyes not so much sexy and alluring, more jaded and done with everything. I was worried I shouldn't have brought it back up when I knew she had made it very clear she wanted to move on completely with the whole matter, but then she pushed herself up and sat down in front of me, her legs now crossed like me.

“You want to talk about it?” She asked softly.

I looked away and felt my tail trying to instinctively dart between my legs. Nazahah just kept on looking at me, calmly wearing away at my reluctance and silently coaxing the words out of me. Daddy seemed to have gotten distracted or taken a detour, and mother was hard at work, all but ensuring it was a matter of time till Nazahah got the answer out of me.

As eloquently as a half-asleep, half-awake child who barely knew _why_ they were feeling terrible about it, or even the names of the emotions involved, I told her. Nazahah nodded and silently urged me on, I assumed both to get the full story and to get more clues to piece together the jumbled mess of words and vague ideas I was giving her.

Eventually I gave up trying to explain it, and Nazahah seemed satisfied with what she'd understood of it. She lightly touched me on the shoulder, I looked up at her, and she locked eyes with me and smiled.

“When I was your age, I was chosen to be a part of the talent show my village was holding as part of our yearly festival. You see, I was _always_ the kid that wanted to be the center of attention, and lucky me, I was born with the vocal chords and the talent that made people want to willingly give it.

“I was so excited to sing, and everyone around me was just as excited to hear me sing, so I spent almost every single hour of my days practicing—as soon as I woke up in the morning, during my chores, and trying and even trying to sneak in as much as I could before my mommy told me, 'Little one, your voice is very lovely, but please, go to sleep already!'”

Nazahah chuckled, and so did I.

“I almost lost my voice from using it so much, actually. Fortunately, my mommy was there to stop me before I could barely croak, and started brewing a special tea to soothe the voice I seemed to want to lose so badly—I still use it today, by the way.

“The night before the festival, I had gotten in all the practice I could get without losing my voice; all the stages, the stalls, and the decorations had been built; and all I really needed to do was go to sleep, wake up early, and get ready to sing in front of the whole village as we celebrated another year of having enough food and water, our homes still standing proud, and... well… most of us still being alive and with us.

“I went to sleep dreaming about the crowds, the beautiful sunrise, how much they were going to love it when I finally sang and how much I was going to love singing for them.

“Then, sometime around midnight, my mommy woke me up: 'Get to the basement,' she said. 'There's a storm coming.'

“Nobody died, our stores were spared, but the festival was ruined—all the decorations, all the stalls, and the stage had been wrecked by the winds or torn apart by the sands, if they weren't completely missing. Coming out of our homes to see everything we'd worked for so hard just _gone_ like that… it wasn't a very good way to start the new year, I'll tell you that.”

Nazahah chuckled bitterly. I remained quiet.

“By chance, my family was supposed to help clean-up the stage. Half of it was missing, and it was full of sand, but it was still there. It just so happened that I came up to it just as the dawn was breaking—right when I was supposed to be up there singing.

“I could have just cleaned up the mess like I was supposed to. Instead, I stepped up on that stage, and I sang anyway.” She got a far-away, dreamy look in her eyes. “The lyrics were all about how we were the people of Vacuo—we lived in a brutal, tough, and unforgiving land, but we were tougher, we were hard workers, and most importantly, we were together.

“It was a song about how we had survived, lived, and loved all through the past year, and we were going to keep on living through this year—and just to remind ourselves of it, we were going to have a huge party, have the time of our lives, and sing songs about how our lands could force us on our knees and pray, but it couldn't _keep_ us down.”

N azahah beamed. “Most of the village said it was an unforgettable first performance, the rest said it was nice to clean up with some lovely music in the background. 

“And in case you missed the point, Coco: bad things just happen. We can't do anything about it. But we _can_ move on, we _can_ stop thinking about how awful it is that it happened, and then we _can_ do something to make things better—for ourselves, for our families, and for everyone around us.”

I did get it, but having it spelled it out in front of me just helped hammer it home even more. “Thank you.” I said, smiling.

Nazahah beamed. “You're welcome, little one. Also, if you ever need a stage or a friend to be by your side when you tell the world you're a Faunus—just say the word, alright?” She grinned.

My smile disappeared. “How did you…?”

Nazahah took on a playful, predatory look. “My _human_ fans' eyes don't light up like that, little one.” She smiled. “It's getting very late for you; you want to go take a nap now?”

Shocked, worried, and quickly tilting further and further to the “sleepy” side of the limbo I was in, I agreed without question.

Part of me was concerned about the other ways I was unintentionally giving myself away.

The rest of me was incredibly, stupidly, _irrationally_ excited that someone like Nazahah knew my secret—if not just between the two of us, then as part of the small circle of people that knew my true nature.


	12. Chapter 12

My and Nazahah's circles rarely intersected over the years—though my mother's profession and hers were closely related, she wasn't the only designer for the rich and famous, and neither was she of a small handful who wanted and could afford my mother's work on a regular basis. Plus, Vale just couldn't bring in the numbers that'd justify more frequent live performances than, say, Atlas or Mistral, nor was Nazahah that big of a star in the ever coveted mass market.

Though she was never there to remind me, the lesson stuck with me for life; besides, to have it come screaming back to the forefront of my mind, I only needed to look at any major news network's feed or tune in to a stream to see a repeat of that infamous assault. The numbers, the methods, and the people involved changed, but it always ended the same: with a Faunus or someone else on the fringes of society getting hurt, humiliated, or killed for no good reason.

What happened to Velvet wasn't fair, not by a long shot—and though I couldn't undo the explosion, force all those words back into their speakers' mouths, and make everyone forget that the incident had ever happened, I knew I could get her justice and better compensation, and I was prepared to fight tooth and claw for it.

… Unfortunately, that particular battle just happened to be of the kind best walked away from.

“What do you mean there's nothing more that you can do?!” I yelled. Underneath my beret, my ears perked up to full alertness, and inside my pant leg, my tail twitched and jerked violently.

Unlike me, Ms. Goodwitch maintained her aura of professionalism, poise, and calm. “Ms. Adel, I have already told you: there is only so much Beacon can do with regards to student misbehaviour. Complicating matters is the experimental and unquantifiable nature of Ms. Scarlatina's work, and of course, the disastrous aftermath of the incident.

“No matter whose fault this was, we still have a completely destroyed locker, several more damaged, and _many_ now non-functioning security cameras; a student who was almost killed or seriously injured; and uncomfortable questions for Ms. Scarlatina about what she is doing with the dust we are providing her.

“If you wish to take this matter more seriously, I suggest you hire your own layers and pursue litigation with the help of a third party—though if I may offer some unsolicited advice, I'd refrain from doing so; the costs aside, I doubt you'll get much more from it than another apology, another promise that it won't happen again, and a _lot_ in the way of stress and headaches.”

I bit my tongue, my whole body shaking. There were so many choice words and phrases that I wanted to tell Ms. Goodwitch, but I reminded myself it'd be all for nothing but disaster.

“Is there anything else, Ms. Adel?” Ms. Goodwitch asked. Her tone was still polite, but it wasn't hard to detect that hint of disdain, the one that flat out told you that the argument had been completely lost, any more rebuttals, cases, or pleas were wasted time and breath.

“No, Ms. Goodwitch.” I said. I skipped on the formalities and just turned around and left the office. I don't think either of us really minded.

To my surprise, Velvet was waiting at the row of chairs by Goodwitch's door, nervously perched on one and looking ready to bolt—to action and into her office, or a hasty retreat down the hall, it was hard to tell. She relaxed and smiled when she saw me, but it quickly disappeared when she saw the resigned, frustrated, and more than a little pissed off look on my face.

“Thanks for fighting for me.” Velvet said quietly. “I appreciate it.”

I smiled, if only a little. “Any time, Velvet.”

Together, we made our way back to our dorm room in silence.

Eventually, the incident blew over, the damage was repaired, and Velvet got a new supply of Dust; people found something else to talk, gossip, and speculate wildly about; and she made a new box, filled it with more of those custom cut and grafted crystals, and even added a little obvious trinket that'd let her know if she hadn't locked it—a mechanical heart that'd be stitched up and whole when closed, shattered and broken when not.

We could proceed with our group training sessions, and just in time, too—the preliminary exams were looming over us. While they were still little less than three months away, it never hurt to train and be prepared long before it so we could iron out any kinks, improve our ability to work together, and ultimately, be ready for actual combat should we need to get deployed in an emergency.

I thought it was the end of our problems, but obviously we weren't going to be so lucky. If I had to describe it in one word, it would be this:

Explosions.

Big explosions. Little explosions.

Tall explosions. Short explosions.

Lengthy explosions. Brief explosions.

Explosions in the forms of pillars of flame that nearly took my eyebrows alongside the still missing curl on the front of my head.

Explosions in the form of violent balls of energy that discharge electricity at random, indiscriminately firing on obstacles, walls, and us, but especially Yatsuhashi for some bizarre reason.

Explosions in the form of giant balls of wind that exploded into many, smaller gusts, which proceed to explode one last time, which if not for Fox's quick footwork, would have been incredibly unpleasant for him indeed.

I'm very certain someone out there would have been extremely pleased to see the results of our first group training session and saved whatever recordings _survived_ for future reference, but as it stood, the technicians weren't happy; I, Fox, and Yatsuhashi weren't happy; and most of all, Velvet wasn't happy.

I stood in the middle of a charred, ruined, and blasted wasteland that used to be a simulation of an urban environment, my handbag held in front of me like a shield, the front of it blackened and smoking, several more trails rising up all around me from various sources. There were still Grimm-bots waiting to be slain, but obviously, “Could we kill them?” was not the biggest concern here.

“Take five, everyone!” I yelled.

The Grimm-bots powered down, as did the atmosphere generators of the training room; all the smoke and fire was quickly vented, while the worst of the damage was put out and hauled off before it could start ruining the structures underneath. As I escorted Velvet to a corner away from where Fox and Yatsuhashi were going, I saw the technicians in the control room debating amongst themselves about how much they were going to need the budget raised if this trend kept up.

“Did you want to make your crystals super powerful just for today?” I asked. “Because they were powerful enough the way they were in the Emerald Forest, trust me.”

Velvet frowned and looked away. “These are the same designs and power as then.”

I blinked and looked back at the destruction we had caused, an _extremely_ sizable chunk of it by Velvet. I remembered the havoc we had caused in the Emerald Forest, and the incident in the locker room, and wondered how if there was something in that forest that had somehow dampened her crystals, and just what exactly those lockers were made of and if they could be used for weapons and armour.

I turned back to Velvet. “Okay… have you ever thought of making them, I don't know a little less powerful?”

Velvet shook her head. “This is how I've always made them.”

“And your teammates never complained?”

An intense flash of hurt came over Velvet's face. “They did, but I was never with them for very long anyway...”

I mentally kicked myself for accidentally hitting a sore note.

For those that don't know, schools for younger huntresses tend not to lock in teams, the intention being that it's best that students get to know a wide variety of personalities before they're forced to work with someone they might loathe with a burning passion or simply did not understand. While this meant that teams were usually friends occasionally shaken up by staff-assigned additions and trades, it also meant that many leaders were allowed to boot off teammates at will, or ignore them from the pickings until they had no choice but to take them.

On rare occasions, some students drifted about from team to team, only grouping up as necessary, either by choice or not. These lone wolves tended not to stay in formal training for very long, as you might expect.

I thumbed back to the smoking ruins. “Any ideas on how to solve this little problem of ours?”

Velvet shrugged. “I could just craft them at lower intensities?”

I nodded. “That's one solution, but not exactly the best; it's not the power that's the issue, it's control—making sure it's aimed at the Grimm, not us.”

“Then what am I supposed to do with my crystals, then?” Velvet asked. I didn't blame her for her problem—I had my own long-running bad habits that were difficult to break, to say the least.

I stopped to think. “Accessorize.” I said.

Velvet stared at me.

“It's like dresses—you can have one that's striking, elegant, and beautiful, but sometimes, it's not enough, and you have to complement it with accessories. Maybe you shouldn't be focusing on using the Dust crystals to help _you_ kill Grimm, but helping _us_ kill Grimm.”

“Like that Ursa I electrocuted and you hit…?” Velvet asked.

“Exactly,” I said. “Focus on just making them stunned, make it so that when I hit them with my bag it gives me some extra electrical punch, not plunge down on the detonator.”

Velvet nodded. “I could do that…” She frowned. “But it's going to take a lot of data and work from you guys; I'll need to know how you fight, how hard you hit, what sort of tactics you usually use and how I can help...”

I smiled and put my hands on her shoulders. “Velvet, whatever you need to know from us, whatever you need us to do, we'll give it to you and do it for you—I promise.”

Velvet paused. Then, she smiled, and I had to say, that one was particularly radiant and memorable. “Train without me, and get footage—I need to go brainstorm what I'm going to need and how I'm going to make this happen...” She said as she turned and made for the exit.

“Atta girl.” I said, giving her a pat on the rear on a spur of the moment impulse.

Velvet squeaked, jumped several inches into the air, and landed facing me with her hands protectively on her rump and a terrified, confused, and embarrassed look on her face. How I managed to keep my expression completely, absolutely neutral then, I don't know.

I gestured for Velvet to leave and she promptly did, much faster than she did earlier and with a few looks behind her back to check and see if I had mysteriously teleported behind her to covertly touch her butt again. I took the opportunity to go walking back to Yatsuhashi and Fox.

“Change of plans, gentlemen: Velvet's off to go solve our little issue.” I said, gesturing off-hand to the ruins. “She'll be needing us for testing and data eventually, but for the moment, we're going to be training and planning our maneuvers around being a trio, not a quad.”

And that we did, especially Velvet.

If she had had any plans for a social life or even leisure time for that month, they all went out the window as she poured herself into her work. Whatever time wasn't spent in class, eating, bathing, or sleeping was spent hard at work poring over her scroll, her notes, or fiddling with her dust crystals. Huge crates of the stuff quickly became a common sight in our dorm room, almost rivaling the sheer number and size of the luggage I had when I had first arrived at Beacon. Several more boxes adorned Velvet's desk, much less intricate and sturdy creations that were made to organize and safely store her creations than be brought out into a real battle.

Velvet herself had experienced some incredibly dramatic change, too. From the shy, wary, and fearful Faunus we knew her as, she became like an Atlantic combat droid, completely focused on its mission, unable to be distracted by anything or anyone. She marched through the halls with efficiency and purpose, and even the bullies had stopped messing with her, partly because they had stopped getting any sort of reaction or acknowledgment whatsoever, mostly because she was starting to turn unnerving to outright terrifying.

Her grades didn't slip, mostly because we were doing some of her homework for her and taking notes for her to copy later. If ever she had huge stacks of books, notebooks, and folders in her hands, you could be sure that it was research about practical applications of dust, the tomes that had been written to try and explain it, along with schematics, diagrams, and techniques for creating new and interesting effects than harnessing them raw.

And if she wasn't studying dust itself, she was studying us. We returned several times to the training room, sometimes as the whole team, most days as one or two plus Velvet. She watched us fight, watched us go through almost every single one of the simulations available to Beacon, had us do those same fights and obstacle courses with restrictions, and for me in particular, she studied how different types of Grimm and objects reacted to getting smacked by my bag, then she asked me to do it over, and over, and over again until I was pretty sure my arms were going to fall off.

She was still, however, a mortal, and she had her limits.

“Coffee?” I asked as I carefully put the mug and the packets of sugar and creamer down on the little free space on Velvet's desk, wary of knocking over a vial of dust, one of the many small apparatus, or staining her many, many, _many_ notes, books, and notebooks.

Velvet looked up from her latest project: grafting more cut dust crystals onto other crystals to form some sort of planned, asymmetric amalgamation using some small, well-worn tools. It took her eyes a moment to adjust and actually see me—figures, as she was staring at glimmering crystals through a high-powered desk lamp for hours before.

“It's Oobleck's personal blend—turns out that stuff is commercially available, believe it or not.” I said.

Velvet nodded mechanically before she put down her tools and reached for the mug.

My eyes widened. “Wait! You're not going to put sugar or creamer in it?”

Velvet shot me a look.

“… Right.” I said.

I watched her take a sip of the coffee, her whole body shaking in revulsion and/or shock, her ears suddenly perking up to full attention and almost _vibrating_. With renewed vigour, she went back to carefully picking up dust crystals with pair of tweezers before she held it up to the main mass and put adhesive to it.

Most people would ask how the project was going, or what exactly she was working on. Most people did not know that about the last thing any artist or creative type in the throes of creation wants you to do is ask how things are going and distract them from their work.

So it was that I quietly wished her goodnight and went to bed.

I found her slumped over her desk when I woke up, dead asleep, the coffee cup empty, dust crystals and pieces safely stored in a box, her cheek resting on a blank piece of paper, and a pencil in her hand. I brought over her pillow from her bed, and gently laid her head down on it.

Still unconscious, Velvet smiled.

I smiled back. Then, I took a shower, before taking the mug and going off in search of another cup of Oobleck's brew.

Something told me she was going to need _much_ more than a cup in the coming days.


	13. Chapter 13

I slipped on a patch of ice, fell on my rear with an inglorious thump, and went on screaming across the training room floor. I tried to stop myself, but my hands and feet kept on slipping, and only managed to send myself spinning round and round. I only stopped when I hit the far wall, ending up with a sore rump, shattered dignity, and the people in the control room laughing at me.

 _Way_ back at the very start of this long stretch of frost, Velvet cringed, offered me an apologetic look, then marked the results of the crystal she'd used in her notebook.

I tried to get up, but only ended up falling, slipping, and spinning around once more. I turned till I could plant my feet on the wall, gave myself a mighty push, then sent myself sliding right back across the training room like a fashionable penguin with a sore stomach. Velvet helped me back up as soon as I reached regular, solid ground that wasn't coated in dust-created ice.

“Alright, let's try that again.” I said as I nursed my aching rear and the both of us moved onto the next patch of clear floor right beside us.

Velvet took out a new crystal, noted its number, before using it to form a new line of ice straight from here to the end of the training room. I took a deep breath, then stepped forward once more.

* * *

After two weeks, Velvet's project had reached its most arduous, costly, and demoralizing phase:

Trial and Error testing.

As any scientist will tell you, theory and hypotheses will only get you so far, especially with a heavily applied science like dust. You could present all the fancy grafts and arguments all you like, no one is going to take you completely seriously until you perform some experiments and duplicate the results.

We had given Velvet all the data we could. Her research had helped her expand her understanding on dust, the mechanisms and manipulations of it, and what would be a good starting point for making her new crystals. Now all that was needed to do was actually see how they'd work in the real world, then tweak formulas, discard variants, save the better ones and make variants of those, or worst case scenario, start over from scratch.

We were only testing five elements and five effects, but you would not believe the sheer amount of crystals Velvet could craft that could do the same thing, if better or worse than its alternatives. The problems were even more numerous.

The earth crystals were too powerful, sending Yatsuhashi up into the air alongside the Grimm-bots, or too weak that it'd only cause them to wobble for a few seconds. The wind crystals wouldn't blow in the right direction, or would go off in random paths soon after Velvet blasted a Grimm-bot or an obstacle with it, let alone what happened to Fox if the gusts didn't blow where they thought they would. The ice crystals, as you have just witnessed, tended to be so slippery I'd lose all control the moment I stepped on it, or make it so that it would have been better for me to just run in a straight line than step on it. The lightning crystals kept on suffering the same problems as before in the Emerald Forest—Grimm-bots' heads and body parts tended to keep exploding on impact—there wasn't enough charge to stun them, or there was too much and it'd sometimes come surging straight back on us if we chose to hit them with melee attacks.

And the fire crystals… I shudder to think about them, let alone recount them.

We went through several boxes of dust, many of them failures, some of the crystals good, and three of them particularly promising. Myself, Yatsuhashi, and Fox had burns, bruises, cuts, shocks, and many, many, _many_ repairs to make on our armour and weapons, with some articles of clothing sadly sacrificed in the name of the never-ending war between Man and Grimm. Velvet herself ended up with a bandaged hand—her crystal wielding hand—from how many of them she had had to pulverize and turn into a powder or harnessed the energy from.

And yet after all that suffering, this was only test one of however many tests we needed to do.

Myself, Yatsuhashi, and Fox were lucky in that after getting back from the training room, we were free to relax, repair, and busy ourselves with our other obligations as students.

Velvet, not so much.

She sighed as she sat down at her desk and started encoding the results into her scroll for safe keeping and organization. Yatsuhashi set down the now empty boxes of trial crystals on her desk, she thanked him, then looked over to the many crates of raw dust that was waiting to be cut, grafted, and tested, all by hand.

If there was any one symbol about how difficult, stressful, and exhausting this task was, it would be the sack of Oobleck's blend we had in one corner and the coffee machine we had bought specifically so Velvet could get a new mug easily and conveniently.

“There has _got_ to be a better way to do this.” I said as I stopped by and topped off Velvet's mug. The white inside was starting to stain dark brown, I noticed. “Can't you hire someone to help you craft these? Develop a better technique? Get better tools?”

Velvet sighed as she picked up her mug. “Dust is incredibly fragile when cut, you need to have really steady hands, patience, and just the right amount of pressure for any prat of the process; this is the best technique that's been developed since the discovery of it; and these are the best tools I can get...” She explained flatly before she took a sip of her coffee.

By now, she was only shuddering a little, but the taste of it never ceased being horrifically bad, she told me.

“Well _someone_ has to have figured out a better way to do this, haven't they? Don't tell me all the dust ammunition factories in the world just have long lines of workers with magnifying glasses, scalpels, and tweezers!”

Velvet put down her mug and looked at me. “They have figured it out—it's just _really_ expensive.”

I raised an eyebrow. “ _How_ expensive, exactly?”

Velvet frowned. “Coco, I can do this by myself.”

I scowled. “Velvet, this is not a question of pride, or me implying that you're somehow unfit for this task—this is a matter of efficiency and your own health. You can't just keep pulling all-nighters and running on Oobleck's coffee until you figure this out; eventually, you're either going to crack the code or _you're_ going to crack, and I'd rather not see the latter happening.

“Now tell me what this solution is. If it's not that expensive, I _swear_ I will find a way to get it; if it's too expensive, we'll think of another way to improve on your dust crystals _without_ you slowly killing yourself.”

Velvet stared at me with the look of the quietly resigned, the factory worker being told they were getting sacked from their job, their power was getting cut, and their insurance wouldn't cover their kid's hospital stay; someone who'd had their one point of pride taken away from them just like that. She put down her mug and pulled out her scroll; after a few moments, she handed it to me and showed off an article from a tech site.

I looked at the picture of the sleek, chrome, obviously Atlantic-make machine with all the robotic arms and their tools, and started reading.

* * *

Pandora was basically a dust manufacturer's wet dream—a machine that could cut, graft, and imbue dust crystals for whatever purpose you needed them to, from just refining them for the mass market, to making custom combinations like the ones Velvet was using, to producing dust powered ammunition. And unlike its predecessor Hephaestus, it took up the space of the average school desk, consumed much less power, and cost much, much, _much_ less in operating costs for the same level of efficiency.

Well, relatively speaking, anyway.

It was developed by the Schnee Dust Company, owned by the Schnee Dust Company, and exclusively licensed by the Schnee Dust Company. And if you know anything about them, government intervention and bad press is about the only thing that'd get them to lease these machines at anything less than a king's ransom.

Pandora was a revolutionary machine who would very quickly recoup the billions if not trillions of money, resources, time, and expertise that had been poured into her creation in less than a year or two, and like many more big corporations than I'd like to admit, Atlas wanted to break even as soon as possible through a combination of two morally ambiguous, certainly despicable, but technically not _illegal_ tactics:

One, as I said, lease it to their competitors at such exorbitant prices it would take them years to actually make good of the investment and by then, Schnee would have already been raking in the profits for several more,

And two, use it to produce more products, cheaper, faster, and more conveniently, thus slowly or rapidly killing off the competition.

There were a whole hotbed of controversy and debates raging all around it, many of which were focused on making it public domain or government subsidized for how important is was going to be in the coming years, what to do with all of the Hephaestus technicians that were going to quickly be jobless because Pandora only needed one instead of a small team, and if it was ethical for the Schnee Corporation to charge so much and monetize so greatly a tool that could make it so much easier for hunters and huntresses everywhere to arm and rearm themselves, and what was the cost of hypothetical lives saved.

I didn't care about any of those, however. My only concern was finding out how to get Velvet access to one of those machines—ideally, right inside our own room for convenience, but I wasn't holding my breath.

Or more specifically, I was asking my daddy to go find out how to get Velvet access to one of those machines.

“Coco, I really don't think we should do this...” Velvet mumbled as we sat together at one of the stations in the communications tower.

“Trust me, Velvet, we need to do this.” I replied as I dialed for home. “So what if we have a slim chance of this working? At least we _have_ one, don't we?”

Velvet was about to reply before my daddy's face came up on screen, wearing an apron with a shark wearing a toque, and holding a tray of sushi in its mouth. Velvet smiled politely, I tried not to laugh too hard at the familiar sight.

“Coco!” Daddy cried. “How nice of you to call! And who's this cutie with you?”

Velvet blushed, I beamed. “She's my teammate Velvet, daddy.”

“Pretty name for a pretty face, how appropriate,” she hummed. “I'm assuming you two didn't call just to say hello and make introductions?”

“Yes: we need to ask a _huge_ favour of you, and I swear, it really _is_ for school this time.”

Daddy smiled knowingly. “We'll see about that. Hit me with the details!”

I turned to Velvet. “Velvet…?” I said as I gestured to the screen.

She looked at me with a mix of shock and betrayal, before quietly sighing and turning to my daddy. “Mrs. Adel… could you please get me a Pandora machine?”

Daddy's eyes rose. “That's a very expensive and very hard to get piece of kit you're talking about—not to mention downright _gorgeous._ ”

“Yes, we know, but we really need it—Velvet here is testing out new types of dust crystals to help us out on the battlefield, and she's just been pushing herself to the limit making them all by hand.” I said, gently elbowing Velvet in the side.

She took the cue to show off her hands—worn, a little calloused, with one of them still bandaged from all the burns and the strain.

Daddy frowned, shook her head, and tutted. “You poor thing… I'll see what I and your mother can do. Please note that the Schnee Dust Company has been notoriously tight about licensing these out to governments and corporations let alone _individuals_ , a single unit costs more than most professionals make in a year, and I've been a little lax with keeping in touch with all of my connections in the world of Dust manufacturing…”

She smiled. “So give me three days, five at the worst.”

I smiled back. “Thanks, daddy.”

Velvet smiled, too. “Thank you, Mrs. Adel.”

Daddy laughed and waved us off. “You can both thank me when I get your hands on a Pandora—now I must go, even with technology today, dinner still isn't going to cook itself, sadly. Ta-ta, sugar, love you!”

“Love you too, daddy, bye!” I said, before I shut off the feed, and turned to Velvet. “Well, you heard her: three to five more days of all nighters and making your crystals by hand, if all goes well, which I'm certain they will.”

Velvet paused to think of her next words. “You're really confident that your... father's going to pull through, aren't you?”

“She's never failed me yet.” I replied proudly.

We got up and made to leave the station and the communications tower.

“You mind if I ask why you called your father to get me a Pandora?” Velvet asked as we walked.

“She used to be a huntress, Signal graduate; completely obsessed with weapons and new and interesting applications for dust, never really put down her weapon when she retired.” I replied. “She always says she wants to be ready if the day comes that she'll have to use Haikili again.”

“Is she why you became one yourself?”

“Partly. It's a long story, we'll be here all day if I told you.”

That, and I wasn't quite comfortable revealing all the details, most of which hinged on the fact that I was secretly a Faunus.

Velvet nodded as we stepped into the elevator. The doors shut and there was silence between us for a few moments. “You mind if I ask why you call her 'daddy'?”

“She's my biological father.” I replied. “She's transgender, and a firm believer of gender being more in the mind than in the body.”

Velvet blinked. “Oh.”

“If that makes you uncomfortable or bothers you in anyway, I'd rather we never speak of it ever again.” I said coolly.

Too many people who've said all the wrong things.

Velvet nodded. There was another silence between us, broken only by the gentle hum of the elevator as it slowed to a stop. “My mama was the reason I became a huntress.” She said.

“Was she a huntress, too?”

“Not exactly. She was a doctor.”

I noted the use of past tense. “I'm sure she's very proud of you for making it all the way to Beacon, Velvet.”

Velvet got a faraway look in her eyes. “Yeah. I guess she is.”

The doors opened, and conversation was suddenly impossible with the hubbub of Beacon around us. Neither of us minded as we spent the rest of our walk to our room in silence.

“Hey, Coco?” Velvet asked.

I stopped in the middle of sliding my card on the lock, and looked at her. “Yes?”

“I'm _really_ sorry for being so weird about you and the others helping me. It's just… I've never really had a team before, and this is all just… so _new.”_

I smiled. “You'll get used to it. Trust me, learning to be dependent on others and delegating tasks feels strange at first, but you'll quickly learn to love it and wonder why you hadn't done it sooner. It's one of the _many_ lessons my mother was _very_ insistent on drilling into my head.”

Velvet nodded. “Do you really think the Pandora's going to help?”

“Definitely!” I said. “Atlas never disappoints. And besides, Velvet: I believe in you. You've done all the prototypes so far by hand, haven't you? And if we have to a find a different solution? We'll all be right behind you helping you look for it.”

Velvet smiled. She teared up but quickly wiped it away. I pretended not to notice.

“Come on, enough chatting out here in the hallways, let's get inside.” I said as I unlocked the door.

“Hey Velvet, hey Coco.” Yatsuhashi greeted us as we came in. Fox paused his meditation to give us an acknowledging nod. I gave Velvet a smug look, before I went over to my desk and busied myself with homework. She smiled, greeted them back, before returning to her table, picking up her tools, and getting back to work making dust crystals by hand.

As I read about Remnant's various systems of government and the infrastructure, I wondered just _what_ we were going to do if Pandora just opened up another box of trouble.


	14. Chapter 14

“Am I dreaming right now?” Velvet asked.

“Better figure that out soon,” the technician we'd been loaned said. “You only have me for so long. Or don't, so you waste even _more_ of our time than you already have.” She said as she tapped her watch—digital, so she could count down every millisecond.

I scowled at her and made note of the name stitched to her jumpsuit: “Periwinkle.” “Cheerful, aren't you?” I said.

“Yes, because teaching newbies how to operate high-tech machinery was _obviously_ part of my job description.” Periwinkle rolled her eyes.

Velvet sat down at one of the chairs in front of the Pandora unit's control panel and screen, hung her head, and looked ready to wait out the storm or for Periwinkle's patience to run out so we could justify getting a new technician.

I wasn't going to be so passive. “Look here, _Periwinkle,”_ I said as I jabbed my finger an inch away from her face. “I don't know what makes you think you have the right to be so disrespectful and outright cruel to my friend, nor do I care what sort of upbringing has made you into the _fine_ human being you are today, but know that I will absolutely _not_ tolerate any more of this unprofessional behaviour.

“Need I remind you that it is the company we owe our gratitude to, and that it is the company that's employing you, and that I can send in a formal complaint with your supervisor that'd make the company think twice about keeping you on?”

Periwinkle glared daggers at me, and made a face that looked like she was about to bite off my finger. Then, for the briefest moment, that steely look faltered as the sensible part of her kicked in and assured her that causing a scene would be bad for her career, to say the least. She groaned and dropped herself into the seat beside Velvet.

“Just tell me what in the world you need this much kit for...” She grumbled.

Velvet showed her her diagrams and the two started translating her notes into Pandora's own design tools and controls. The arms were still and at the ready, while on the screen Periwinkle manipulated a three-dimensional model of a dust crystal while Velvet instructed her on what to do. The two of them quickly dove into rapid discussion full of technical jargon that made my head spin, so I just perched myself on the side and made sure that Periwinkle didn't try to so much as scowl at Velvet.

In the beginning I had assumed that, as most companies are wont to do with low-priority favours, we had gotten the most unfriendly technician on their payroll to keep her out of the others' hair, but as it turns out, Periwinkle was _also_ one of the best they had—and certainly one of the youngest. I doubted she was more than three years older than us, which might have explained her apparent lack of people skills and her vendetta against pretty much everyone in all of Remnant.

She really wasn't that bad once you had gotten her back in her comfort zone—manufacturing and refining dust—than talking to people outside of text messages, phone calls, and video-conferencing. She perked up quite a bit when she found out that Velvet spoke the same language as her (and to this day, I have no idea what “resonance,” “formation,” and “conduction” mean in terms of dust manipulation) and she was positively giddy at not having to explain anything and being able to speak with Velvet as an equal.

If you didn't know the two of them were working with one of the most advanced manufacturing tools that was already completely revolutionizing the industry as we knew it, you might have thought they were gushing over a fan website for their celebrity idol with how much their eyes were shining, the sheer energy and passion radiating from them, and the intense, wide-eyed interest Periwinkle was giving their project.

It was adorable.

The mood quickly turned serious at the end, however. Periwinkle and Velvet spun their model around, double checking the appearance of the crystal and all the parameters that had been set. With a nod from Velvet, it was time to actually make it.

Watching Pandora work, you'd think you had been on the set of a science fiction film. You know the one: platform in the center, where dozens of robotic arms swarmed around, their many tools working in perfect sync and operating all at the same time. A single dust crystal had been set as the base, then in seconds, it was cut apart, new fragments were grafted onto it, before being secured with powerful adhesive, then the finished product was given a spray to clean it and give it a beautiful sheen.

The platform lowered and moved out of the “operating room” to a covered box on the side. Periwinkle removed the vacuum seal on it, flipped open the lid, and gestured to the freshly crafted crystal.

Velvet stared at it. To be fair, if machines could do in seconds what took my mother several hours to days to craft, I'd be shocked, impressed, and more than a little concerned, too.

“Well?” Periwinkle asked, mildly annoyed.

Velvet gingerly picked it up. It hummed and glowed with its own power, the many grafted pieces and the colours it was made of giving it a unique appearance from most dust I've ever seen. She held it in her palm, and closed her eyes. “It feels right.” She said before she carefully placed them into one of the many boxes she had brought.

“You're doing very new things with dust.” Periwinkle said. “I like it. Now show me your next design, clock's still ticking.”

* * *

Velvet's entire schedule changed when she learned that Pandora more than lived up to its reputation and suddenly freed up so many hours spent crafting the crystals by hand—all she really needed to do now was design the crystals, learn how to use Pandora via manuals and a training simulation on her scroll, then mail the schematics over to Periwinkle who'd happily produce them on-site and have them shipped to us.

“Be happy you didn't sign off your rights to these designs.” She wrote back once. “Be happier still I only care about making them.”

We ignored whatever she was implying and went straight back to testing them. The problems were much less numerous by the second batch of crystals, and the further into the trials we got, the more in became fine tuning and figuring out which of them would be the best crystal for the job. The whole process was also much, much easier now that Velvet was running on actual sleep that caffeine.

Finally, nearly a month after we first started, we all stepped into the training room with only one box of crystals between us—specifically, the combat ready box with the heart-shaped lock. We waited on the side as the technicians and the worker bots erected a familiar scene of fake skyscrapers, streets, and urban buildings.

“You ready, Velvet?” I asked as Grimm-bots and target droids moved into place.

She put on her most serious expression and nodded.

“Alright: everyone in their places. On my signal, we kick as much ass as we can.”

At the moment, the “city” was quiet, the Grimm-bots looking menacing but their red LED eyes humming dimly, the target droids frozen still or holding whatever position their predicament was supposed to be. We all set up in the fake town center, had one last ready check, then raised my hand.

I put up my thumb, and all hell broke loose.

Screams filled the air, recorded and played back on loops but no less horrifying and bone-chilling. The Grimm-bots activated their combat subroutines with glee, dozens of them tearing into the buildings, chasing down the fleeing droids, if they weren't already pinning them down and tearing them into scrap metal and sparking wires. Simulated fire and smoke blazed around us as the peaceful patch of civilization turned into a living hell.

Sirens played alongside a calm, female voice repeating the same phrase over and over again:

“Code Black”

For those of you that don't know, a Code Black is your worst case scenario. If a Code Red has hunters and huntresses rushing to the scene, a Code Black has them running right from it and standing guard at the borders. Once its declared, a settlement or an area is considered completely lost, wiped off the map, the people in there as good as dead, for all anyone cares. Any hunters, huntresses, and poor saps trapped in there encouraged to run if they can, or find a nice sturdy wall to put your back to before you made your final stand.

The name came from what you'd always see in this sorts of scenarios: hordes of Grimm, swarming over everything and packed so thick you could only see their inky black hides as they tore everything apart.

A simulated Code Black was used for three things: one, teaching cocksure hunters and huntresses their job wasn't an excuse to wield a weapon, kill Grimm, and get paid to do it; two, as preparation should any one of these _actually_ happen, heaven forbid; and three, as a pretty damn good test to see if your fancy new weapon designs would actually work in the real world.

There was no winning in a Code Black. Either you died to the Grimm or from sheer exhaustion, or you evacuated and ran as fast as you could—or in this case, until we cried uncle or the technicians decided we'd had enough.

There was no planning in a Code Black. Oh, sure, there were probably team formations, positions and situations you'd want certain members of your team to be in, but after that, everything was purely reactive.

There were no breaks in a Code Black. From the moment you heard those sirens blaring, you had better be ready to run or to fight.

And we weren't here to run.

The Grimm-Bots were on us in seconds with a huge pack of beowolves led by a particularly large alpha. They all howled and snarled at us as they started circling around us, getting ready close in, pounce, and tear us all apart like the other Grimm-bots were doing the hapless “civilians.”

I turned my weapon into a minigun and started spinning the barrel. Myself, Fox, and Yatsuhashi stood back to back, weapons ready, Velvet in the center. The heart on her chest tore into pieces, the lid popped open, she put her hand on the assortment of crystals inside, ready to take out one at a moment's notice.

The beowolves pounced.

“Bucking bronco!” I yelled.

The earth beneath our feet shuddered as Velvet threw the crystal down, a shockwave disorienting the attacking Grimm-bots and sending the ones still on the ground airborne; Yatsuhashi his sword into the ground, a second shockwave sending them all flying off straight into the walls of buildings, into the far walls of the training room, or smack into each other with satisfying, _lethal_ impacts.

The only one that was just reeling was the alpha, but only for a second; that particular droid was made of much tougher stuff than that, and immediately went charging after us.

“Shock the big guy!” I cried as I started firing at it, dozens of bullets digging into its hide, slowing it down not one bit.

The alpha beowulf opened its jaws to sink its teeth into me. It got a mouthful of lightning and splayed out on the floor, writhing, twitching, and jerking about violently as the electricity did a serious number on the circuitry inside of it and poured out of the damage from the gunfire. Yatsuhashi slammed the flat of his sword into its head, the sudden power surge and the sheer force of the hit cracking the robot's skull in two.

One squad of Grimm-bots dead, many, many, _many_ more to go.

Thanks to their AI and manual intervention from the technicians in the control room, the Grimm-bots changed tactics, the land bound creatures suddenly clearing away as a horrible screech filled the air. We looked up and saw a robotic Nevermore circling us and preparing to dive, its massive talons more than capable of scooping us all up while we were packed tightly like this.

“Cyclone the bird!” I yelled as everyone except Velvet ran in separate directions.

She pulled out a wind crystal from her box, crystal clutched tightly in her hand, and waited for the Nevermore with ears pulled back and eyes locked on.

The Nevermore dove after Velvet with another terrible screech. It would have caught her between its talons, too, if she hadn't timed the trap right and jumped well out of the way before it deployed.

Violent, powerful winds started spiraling around the Nevermore. The robot flapped its wings helplessly, trying to regain control only to get spun higher and higher up into the air. Velvet ran off to join Yatsuhashi, Fox stepped into the growing cyclone, jumping onto its side, going round and round into the air until he reached the top, and dove into the eye and Nevermore.

You couldn't see what Fox was doing for all the walls of gale-force winds and debris, but when it cleared, an unharmed Fox and a sliced and mangled Nevermore came falling to the ground with a rain of sliced synthetic parts and thin strips of metal. The energy of the dust-powered wind still swirling around him, his fall slowed enough to let him land unharmed, and let the Grimm-bots rush to where he was going to land.

I ran to the street he was in and started blasting his welcoming party to scrap-metal and sparking bits. Wind and boarbatusks started rushing past me, forcing me to stop firing and start jumping and dodging like crazy as more and more of them rushed past me and the others came back for a second round.

“Slip and slide on the boars!” I yelped just as one came this close to snagging my side and dragging me along with it.

A line of ice quickly formed between me and the boarbatusks. As soon as they hit the frost, they veered dramatically off-course, accelerated far too quickly for them to control, or went smacking right into each other.

Fox somehow managed to land without getting in the path of any of the out of control boarbatusks. I turned my minigun back into a bag as we met in the middle of the street and dove into a building, hoping to cut through it and to the other side where Velvet and Yatsuhashi were.

Ten red eyes suddenly lit up in the darkness, and the technicians gave us another unpleasant surprise:

A robot Death Stalker.

Without need for things like sight, Fox easily dodged the Grimm-bot's holographic stinger.

I wasn't so lucky as a claw came smashing into me and sending me flat on my back. I redeployed my gun, the whole thing coming back together just in time for the Death Stalker to raise its tail and aim it me. Even if I knew it couldn't kill me, the technicians had found some extremely unpleasant ways to make it hurt.

I pulled the trigger, the barrel's started spinning. The Death Stalker sent its tail crashing down on me. Then, it burst into flames.

The robot panicked and flailed as fire spread all throughout its body, eating away at the armour plating covering most of its body and rendering it almost useless. I wasted aiming the barrels right at its and putting several dozen armour-piercing bullets into it.

The Death Stalker collapsed, a flaming, sparking, ruined wreck. Yatsuhashi pulled me out before it could fall on me, and helped me back onto my feet and onto a new ice patch. The two of us screamed across the ground and back to Velvet and Fox, new Grimm-bots pouncing and chasing after us all the while.

The rest of the Code Black was a giant mess of screaming, fighting, and destruction, the buildings getting turned to rubble, bullet holes covering the walls of the training room, and more than a couple of badly mangled floors and scorch marks from all the dust Velvet was using.

Some time later, the technicians finally killed the simulation when I and Velvet had our backs to a wall, out of bullets, out of dust, and ready to go down swinging. The Grimm-bots that were about to pounce on us powered down as technicians came out with trolleys and servant droids to pick up all the wrecked bots and see what could be salvaged, while Fox and Yatsuhashi got up from the floor where they had been laying “dead.” Up in the control room, those that weren't weeping at how much high-tech machinery we'd turned to scrap were clapping and cheering for us.

Yatsuhashi finally sheathed his sword and stretched out his sore arms. Fox took off his gauntlets before dropped to the floor and laid down on a comfortable patch of ground. I dropped my bag before my arms did. Velvet awkwardly pulled out of her combat stance, and closed her empty box.

She looked at me with a half-curious, half-worried expression.

I smiled at her. “Good job, Velvet.”

She smiled back.

My heart started beating a lot faster. I excused it as leftover adrenaline, and thought little of it as I officially declared our training session over.

Little did I know I was just falling deeper and deeper into an entirely new problem I couldn't solve as easily as I did Velvet's crystals.


	15. Chapter 15

The new troubles started with what a thought was going to be a solution.

“Hey, Velvet, are you free this Saturday?” I asked her as she came out of the training room's bathroom.

Velvet stopped drying her ears and looked at me. “Yes… why do you ask...?”

“I was wondering if you'd like to go out clothes shopping together, before going out to dinner with the others.”

Velvet paused. “… Why…?”

I lowered my sunglasses and gave her an incredulous look. “Well, first and foremost, you've been working yourself ragged radically redesigning your arsenal, and you deserve a break and a reward, and second, I've seen the inside of our closet and the clothes you own. Yatsuhashi and Fox may be able to get away with wearing the same thing over and over again as is par for the course with males, but you _seriously_ need to expand your wardrobe, or at the very least, get yourself a little black dress and some clothes and accessories to go with it.”

Velvet looked at me with a mix of confusion and mild offense. “I'm fine with my clothes as is! I don't need new ones.”

“And that's what _you_ think, Velvet. As my namesake said, 'A girl should be two things: classy and fabulous.' And while you look pretty good right now, it never hurts to look even better.” I smiled as I pushed my sunglasses back up.

Velvet blushed, unsure of how to reply to that.

“So is that a yes or a no? And don't even begin to think about cost, I'm covering all of it.”

Velvet shrugged. “Yes…?”

“Great! We'll finalize details later, I need to go see the boys and tell them about dinner. Later, Velvet.” I said, casually waving goodbye as I left.

Velvet went back to drying her ears and quietly mulling it over.

I found Yatsuhashi and Fox waiting just outside at the divide between the boy's and girl's half of the training room's showers.

“Would you two happen to be free Saturday evening?” I asked.

Yatsuhashi shook his head, while Fox grunted in the negative.

I clapped my hands together. “Fantastic! We're all going out to dinner then, to thank Velvet for all her hard work redesigning her crystals, so you two better get your formal outfits aired out and ironed.”

“Are you sure you want us with you and Velvet?” Yatsuhashi asked.

I paused. “Why would you ask that?”

“If you're going to ask her out, ask her out,” Fox said bluntly. “Don't use us as cover.”

I blushed and scowled. “ _Excuse_ me?”

“You know what I mean.” Fox replied.

I scowled deeper. “No, I _don't_ , now will either of you _please_ explain it to me?”

Yatsuhashi volunteered. “Well, Coco, with the way you act around Velvet, we always just assumed--”

My finger never flew out so fast or had such a powerful, stunning effect as then. “Listen here, you two: my interest in Velvet is _purely_ as her friend and her leader. Misinterpret signals and read signs that aren't there all you want, but let me make it clear that I do not have _any_ sort of romantic interest in Velvet, and that I simply do not fall in love with anyone, _period_.”

Yatsuhashi's expression turned worried while there was a miniscule change in Fox's stony aura. I had assumed I had made my point quite clear to them, until I spun around and realized that Velvet was standing right behind me. She had only stepped up to the exit upon the tail end of my little speech, but thanks to her Faunus hearing, she'd heard _everything._

The look on her face made it quite clear, too.

All of my outrage and bravado drained in an instant. If Velvet's smile could make my heart race, seeing that frown of surprise, sadness, and resignation shattered it into pieces—the pain made worse by the fact that _I_ was the one who had made her like that.

“… Velvet.” I mumbled.

She nodded at me and smiled—it was painfully obvious that she was forcing it. “So, where are we going, exactly?” She asked, her voice devoid of most of its usual life.

“Little place called 'Tres Hermanas.' Nothing too fancy that it needs a reservation, but I hear the food's great. Any of you against West Vacuo cuisine?”

Everyone said no.

“Great! You're all free to go do whatever it is you want now, dismissed.”

Velvet went with Yatsuhashi and the two of them made their way to the farther exit to the training room. Fox walked with me as we made our way to the more convenient door.

“Not a single word, Fox.” I warned him as I kept my eyes resolutely forward. “Not a single word.”

He grunted, and remained silent for the rest of the day. He didn't need words to get his message across, however.

* * *

I spent the rest of that afternoon making reservations at Tres Hermanas, researching about the boutiques and shops in Vale, before calling daddy. I made a habit of telling at least one of my parents what I was using their money for, or why they were writing a check—it was only polite, and it never hurt to be aware of the fact that they had the right to deny me at any time, not that that was likely to happen.

“… Expect to see plenty of charges from every single ladies fashion boutique in Vale, along with a bill from a restaurant called _Tres Hermanas._ I doubt we'll spend much nor is it that expensive, but I haven't seen any of their eating habits when you give them good food and free reign to order, so be prepared.”

Daddy laughed. “Nothing your mother or myself can't handle! I'll see if I can't pull any favours from her associates there in Vale and get you two some perks or preferential treatment.”

“Please don't; Velvet's already reluctant enough about this, I don't want to scare her off in case of overly enthusiastic attendants.”

“Noted. Wouldn't do to lose her this early, after all, she sounds like quite the keeper!”

Daddy smiled, I scowled. “Velvet and I are _not_ dating, daddy.”

Daddy quirked an eyebrow. “Really now? Because that's not the vibe I get from the two of you.”

“You of all people should know that I'm never going to fall in love ever again.” I growled, my ears pulling back underneath my beret.

Daddy's face softened. “It's been six years, sugar: plenty of things have changed, and it's not just the date on the calendar.”

“Yeah, well some things don't change.” I snapped back.

Daddy raised her hands up in surrender. “Alright, alright, end of discussion… was that all you needed from me for this call, or do you need to help you get access to another expensive piece of cutting-edge equipment?”

“Velvet's still busy with writing up her testimonial telling the world what a generous and kind company New Horizons is for letting her use their Pandora.” I paused. “… And just one more thing.”

Daddy smiled. “And I'm guessing it has to do with Velvet?”

My ears drooped. “… Yes. Am I _really_ that obvious?”

“You inherited more than just your mother's most prominent features, Coco. You and her? It's pretty easy to tell whatever either of you are feeling when you let your guards down.

“Now, what exactly _is_ the problem?”

I sucked in a breath. “Well, while I was informing Yatsuhashi and Fox about our plans this weekend, they happened to make the _wildly_ ludicrous assumption that I was inviting them along as a cover for taking Velvet out to dinner.”

Daddy nodded, her face betraying nothing.

“I set them straight immediately, of course, and informed them in no uncertain terms that I have no romantic interest in Velvet, and I do not fall in love, _period_.”

“And…?” Daddy asked.

My expression grew uneasy. “… Velvet was right behind me, and I think she, uh… I think she actually had an interest in me, in that way. And I'm really rather very certain that I completely, absolutely shattered her hopes in one of the most brutal fashions possible short of rejecting her to her face.”

Daddy nodded. “So now you've broken her heart, unintentionally made a right arse of yourself, and now you want to set things right, help her recover, plus make yourself feel like less of a complete arse.”

I stared at the screen. “… To put it bluntly, yes. I doubt any lingering hostilities or heartbreak will be very good for our team dynamics, it's the right thing to do… and I just don't want to lose Velvet as a friend over this one huge mistake...”

Daddy gave me a sympathetic look. “Who doesn't? Anyway, the very first thing you should do is have one of your other friends get that girl an abundance of chocolate or chocolate-based products of her choice.”

“Done.” I replied. “Yatsuhashi grew up with several sisters, cousins, and aunts that didn't have much luck in the dating pool, he knows the protocol.”

“Lucky for all of you, then! The second thing to do is give her some space. Rejecting someone should be done ASAP, but _after_ the actual rejection, it's best to give them a few days or so to recover before you attempt to talk to them.”

I nodded. It was a Tuesday then, and I hoped that roughly three days of classes would be enough for Velvet to get out of her funk. All things go wrong, we could always reschedule for a better week.

“The third and by far the most important part you have to do is talk to her and clarify things. I'm assuming you haven't told her the story yet?”

I cringed to even think of it. “No, haven't to anyone except you and mother.”

“Well, this might be a good time to finally tell one more soul about it. Before all this, however, you _really_ do have to ask yourself about what Velvet is to you, and what you want your relationship with her to be.”

I scowled at her again. “I've already told you: Velvet and I are friends, nothing more.”

“And I'm telling _you,_ you better ask yourself that question still, preferably somewhere quiet and where you can think.”

I groaned. “What'll it take for me to convince you that my interest with Velvet is most definitely platonic?”

Daddy grinned. “Oh, I have just the thing! Give me a minute!” She said before she disappeared from her screen.

I patiently waited at my station at the communications tower, staring at my home's living room while my father was who-knows-where grabbing who-knows-what. Eventually, she returned with a clipboard and pen in hand.

“Found it!” She said as she settled herself back into her chair and put on her “doctor” pose: leg's crossed, clipboard held at an angle but the contents unseen to her “patient,” her pen hovering just over the papers. “Time to administer a test that will definitively answer whether or not you are actually in love!”

I stared at her for a moment, before scowling as deep as my lips could go. “You devised a test specifically for this sort of occasion?!” I asked.

“Modified it, actually!” Daddy replied cheerfully. “Save for a few details, this is an almost _exact_ replica of the very same test I used on your mother. Now, shall we begin?” She smiled.

I groaned again. “Fine.”

“There's only three questions to this test, answerable only by yes or no! Should you answer yes to all three of them, you are most definitely in love with Velvet, or at the very least, have a serious crush on her; one or two declares you interested, but not that seriously or in a non-romantic fashion; and none at all means you two really _are_ just friends.

“Now, question one: do you feel particularly close to this person? Do you feel that you care for them, or are more invested with your interactions with them over other people? Do you consider them a best friend, someone you can trust in, share important secrets, and be the person sitting next to you in your cell should you get arrested?” Daddy asked, all while keeping a completely straight face.

I rolled my eyes. “As one of her three friends here at Beacon: yes.”

Daddy made a check mark. “Question two: have you experienced one or more of the following symptoms during any of your interactions with this person, when one or the both of you have been particularly happy: unexplained, extremely rapid increase in heart rate; blushing or a feeling of heat in your cheeks or skin; a tendency to find their smiles particularly radiant and infectious; a strong desire to protect them from enemies, misfortune, and arses, bordering on violent reactions; and/or a tendency to be more physically intimate with them than others, be they touching shoulders, making longer, more sustained eye contact, or holding hands?”

My eyes darted away. “… Yes.”

Daddy hummed and made another check mark. “Alright, question three: have you ever had romantic and/or sexual thoughts about them, including, but not limited to: wondering what it would be like to kiss them; what the inside of their mouth would taste like; how they would react to intimate touching or groping; what do they look like naked; what it would be like to get extremely physically intimate with them without full-on intercourse; what it would be like to have full-on intercourse with them; and/or what it would feel like to hold their hand?”

I blankly stared at the screen, mouth agape.

“And one, and two, and three...” Daddy quietly mumbled.

“WHAT THE— _WHY_ WOULD YOU—I ABSOLUTELY _DO NOT_ —I HAVE NO _IDEA_ WHAT EVEN MADE YOU _THINK UP_ THAT QUESTION—WHAT DO EVEN YOU THINK GIVES YOU THE RIGHT—VELVET AND I ARE JUST--” The rest of my words came out as an angry, incoherent spluttering voiced out at the top of my lungs, while all the while my cheeks burned bright red, and my brain was _also_ putting forth lots of interesting mental images alongside the things to yell at my father.

Daddy just sat there in her chair, observing me with the detached coolness of a scientist studying an animal specimen rage and tear apart its habitat from behind the safety of a glass wall—or in this case, behind a screen and several miles and stories away from where I was.

Eventually, I ran out of breath and I had to stop, red-faced, seething, my ears pulled back and my tail violently twitching in my pant-leg. I was so mad I didn't even register the strange looks people were giving me, the people nearby conversing in careful, hushed tones, and the other students seeking to use the terminals choosing free ones that were far, far away from me, or hovered over the occupied ones than take one of the empty seats in my general area.

I sucked in a deep breath. **“NO.”** I said firmly. “I have absolutely _never_ had any of those...” I struggled to get the words out. “… _thoughts_ about Velvet, nor will I _ever_ have them, because she and I? We're just friends, absolutely, _positively_ no more than just that!” I said as firmly as I could while my whole body shook.

Daddy quietly made a check mark once more. “'Violent, spirited, and potentially verbally abusive denial that they may have a romantic interest in the person, along with very obvious signs pointing to the exact opposite of the words coming out of their mouth,' check.”

She smiled and showed off her clipboard, three boxes with three checks on them. “I have made my diagnosis: you are in love with Velvet.” She said proudly.

I stared at her once more, mouth agape, my sunglasses askew from the outburst. “… Goodbye, daddy, I love you.” I said through gritted teeth.

She laughed. “Goodbye, Coco, I love you, too.” She shut off the feed before I had to, saving Beacon the cost of replacing one of the stations.

I slipped out of my seat and stormed out of the communications tower in a bad mood, to say the least.

“ _Ridiculous,”_ I grumbled to myself. “In love with Velvet… what does she know?”

 _Quite a lot_ as it turns out _,_ but that's for later.


	16. Chapter 16

As if mimicking my mood, the skies grew dark, the clouds converged and blotted out the sun, and a torrential downpour began all over the city of Vale and Beacon. This would have been just fine if, like many of the other students in the school, I had chosen to take a walk near the covered structures and buildings or was already indoors, instead of trudging out the front door and all the way to the very edge of the landing strips.

I never noticed the change in weather, the way people were suddenly making a u-turn straight to the nearest shelter, nor the sudden darkness in the middle of the afternoon; I was too riled up, and filled with determination to look over the edge of Beacon, at the general direction of my house many miles away, and do some cathartic yelling when she couldn't hear me.

Just as soon as I sucked in a deep breath, the clouds rumbled, and buckets of rain and wind proceeded to drench me. I stayed there standing on the edge, the corners of my mouth turned down as deep as they could go, quickly getting soaked to the bone as I slowly let out that breath.

Most people would have taken that as a good sign that they shouldn't have done what they just did. I took it as a sign to shoot the sky a rude hand gesture.

Behind me, a Beacon guard in a raincoat braved the rain, a cheap umbrella that was rapidly being torn apart by the elements in their hands. “Hey! Get inside! You'll catch a cold out here!” They called out.

I decided that was as good a time as any to put my hand down, do an about face, and march straight back to school, making a huge splash in the puddles as my boots stomped on them. The umbrella flew out of the guard's hands before they made it to me, but it wouldn't have really done any difference at that point.

“What were you doing out here, kid?” The guard asked.

“It's a long story...” I grumbled.

* * *

“A hunter on a sick bed is as good as one in the ground,” as the saying goes, so Beacon was not about to skimp on measures to keep the student population healthy. There was a battalion of guards and staff handing out towels, changes of clothes, vitamins, hot chocolate, and chicken soup for those that were caught out in the rain. Others wielded mops and sopped up the inevitable trails of dripping water and muddy boots.

I wrapped a towel around myself, washed some pills down with orange juice to stave off a cold, then headed straight for my room. Much as I wanted to stick around, dry out, and warm myself up with my fellow unlucky compatriots, I couldn't risk someone asking _why_ I wasn't taking off my obviously soaking wet clothes.

Fox was inside, standing by our closed window with the raindrops pounding away at the glass. Velvet and Yatsuhashi were presumably waiting out the storm elsewhere in school or in town, and I hoped they hadn't been caught by the downpour like I was. On my bed was a towel and my bed clothes, complete with the cap that I used to hide my ears.

How Fox managed to pick them out, and more so dress himself without the slightest bit of help from anyone, I didn't know, and never did.

“Thanks.” I said as I scooped them up before heading straight for the showers.

Thankfully, the supply of hot water at Beacon could weather the storm. There was more than enough of it for me to soak in and heat me right back up as I let all my frustrations and stresses wash away. When I'd had enough, I shut off the water and stood in the middle of all that steam and warmth, just enjoying the calm and the faint, steady thrumming of the rain at the windows.

Daddy's advice came back to me, and I figured in the shower with just Fox outside the door was all the peace and solitude I could ever need.

What is Velvet to me? I thought.

In the beginning, she was a risk, just someone who may or may not have known my secret by accident, someone I was helping out partly for selfish reasons, partly out of common decency. Now she was my teammate, my subordinate, and the closest friend I had here in Beacon, and I was _her_ best friend, too. Now I was helping her out because it'd be good for the team, because even Beacon couldn't stop Faunus racism this deeply ingrained and prevalent, and because I wanted to help her out and make something go right in her life, for once.

And based on that incident earlier today, she was falling or had fallen in love with me, before I ended up accidentally shattering her heart into millions of pieces.

And according to my father, Yatsuhashi, and Fox, I was also apparently falling or had fallen in love with her, I just wouldn't recognized it, or see it.

What did I want my relationship with her to be?

Purely professional teammates whose interest in each other was strictly because they were living with each other, they were working with each other, and both their grades and their graduation from Beacon Academy revolved almost entirely on their ability to work well together. Something simple, uncomplicated, one where we could be just above the level of strangers and acquaintances, someone you cared to remember the name of, but someone you didn't care _that_ deeply about.

Someone who you couldn't wound as badly if you hurt them, someone who didn't trust you that deeply outside of the battlefield, someone you didn't care so deeply about, someone you didn't want to protect and cherish at all times, someone that that you couldn't leave vulnerable to some of the worst, most horrific, and long-lasting pain possible.

I didn't want to fall in love with Velvet—I _couldn't_ fall in love with her.

For all the praise, the songs, and the works waxing on and on about how great love is, there's plenty more telling you about how devastating, how brutal, how lethal it could be when it all goes horribly wrong.

And to make matters worse, there was very little you could do about it.

You could pour your heart and soul out to someone. Leave yourself completely bare, defenseless, and open, completely at their mercy. Think, plan, and prepare as best as you could, until you had crafted an absolutely foolproof plan, timed it for the most perfect moment imaginable, and had the stars and the planets align and smile down on you, too.

But you could never, ever completely eliminate the risk of being rejected by someone.

They could be absolutely _vicious,_ tearing everything you are into pieces right before your eyes with manic, sadistic glee, before they walk off and leave you a shattered shell of your usual self, sometimes in the arms of another just to put some extra hurt into it. They could be polite and as nice as they possibly could, letting you down gently and expertly, softening the blow massively. They could bumble and stumble, making it clear to you that they weren't interested, that they didn't love you in that way, or that they couldn't love you in that way, without the slightest hint of malice or desire to hurt you.

And in the end, it'd all the be the same. Heartbreak. Despair. Suffering like few things in this world can match.

You could promise to change. You could try even harder to win them over. You could successfully move heaven and earth for them.

And yet it wouldn't make the slightest bit of difference, because there was nothing you could do to change yourself or change their mind. Maybe you just weren't their type, maybe one or the both of you were of the wrong sexual orientation, maybe you two just weren't meant to be.

Or in my case, you were doomed the moment you were born.

Tears started to sting my eyes as I gripped my tail, fingers sinking into the damp fur, sharp points of my claws digging into the skin underneath. It wasn't the problem, nor were my ears; they weren't keeping me from wanting to love Velvet, from breaking the masquerade and revealing who I really was, from quitting living this lie and finally being free from all the chains on me.

The problem was that I was a complete, absolute coward.

I could happily risk life and limb fighting off Grimm, and dedicate the rest of my life to it. I could stand up to the likes of Glynda Goodwitch without buckling down once, until all was well and truly lost. But when it came to being honest about who I was, about having every single part of this carefully constructed lie fall apart completely, about facing the aftermath and having to live with all the consequences I'd worked so hard to avoid…

… I just couldn't do it.

I was brought back to the present by a furious, insistent banging on the door.

“Coco?” Fox asked, his normally monotone voice tinged with worry.

“What…?” I asked, my voice making it sound more of a sob. I quickly realized I was crying, clutching my tail to my chest, and shaking violently.

“I'm here. You're not alone.”

My lips turned up into a small smile. Then, I put my head against the tile wall and started sobbing all over again. Eventually, the tears slowed, I finished my shower, and got ready for bed—ears and tail dried and stuffed into or under my clothes and hidden from sight, as they had been for years.

Fox was waiting for me just outside, silently asking if there was anything he could do, or maybe just looking for a sign to call the campus mental health specialists on me.

“I'll be fine,” I said. “Thanks for the concern.”

Fox frowned, grunted, and went back to his vigil by the window. The rain still hadn't stopped, though it was weaker than the downpour it was earlier. I trudged over to my bed, and settled in for an early night, I was exhausted.

As I listened to the sounds of the rain outside and waited to drift off to sleep, I thought of what it would be like if I _did_ return Velvet's feelings, if the two of us got together.

What kind of relationship would that be?

A _terrible_ one.

One loaded down by a gigantic lie and no doubt maintained by many smaller ones and purposefully unexplained incidents, one where I couldn't be completely honest with Velvet, one that would all fall apart if she ever found out my secret, or at least rock her to her very core and make her question just what else I'd been hiding from her, and if there was anything else I was lying to her about.

I couldn't fall in love with her.

For both our sakes.

Because no one deserved a relationship like that.

I went to sleep, and woke up at four in the morning, as usual. My eyes hurt from all the crying I'd done last night, but I didn't mind it that much.

I realized there was something different. I was holding onto something, and holding onto it tightly. In the dim light of the wee hours of the morning, and with the impeccable sight my heritage gave me, I discovered what it was:

A plush toy.

It was a slug, one made out of an old sock that had been stuffed, and had eyes and a face stitched onto it. From all the wear and tear on it, it had seen a lot of use, a lot of abuse, and a lot of love. The years had not been kind to it, too.

I looked around to see if there was any note left behind or identifying marks on the toy itself, and found none. I pushed myself up to see if any of my teammates happened to be awake, but all three of them were deep asleep. I looked at the toy still in my hands, and climbed out of bed.

I left it resting on my pillow as I dressed up and left the room in search of food—vitamins and orange juice did not make a dinner.

* * *

Beacon's dining hall was open at all hours—you never knew when you might have hungry students returning from a mission or grabbing a quick bite before they shipped off to an emergency—but obviously, the fare was much more limited, simple, and catered to a very specific audience.

“What'll it be, hun?” The worker manning the cashier asked me.

I looked at the offerings: coffee, scrambled eggs and toast from a limited selection of breads, breakfast sandwiches, pancakes, fried and greasy foods like bacon, hashbrowns, and the occasional bit of fresh fruit in case you were feeling up to something healthy. In the end, I got a heaping serving of more fat, sugar, and grease than anyone should ever have in a single meal, and looked for a seat.

It wasn't hard, seeing as the cafeteria was mostly deserted, only a few smatterings scattered all over the tables of insomniacs, students pulling off all-nighters and in need of sustenance, and a few students that were returning from Vale and decided not to dine out in town.

I set my tray down, took a sip of my coffee—not Oobleck's blend, thank goodness—and pulled out my scroll to start planning out my day. I was greeted by one new message from my mother:

“Please call me as soon as you can.”

The CCT was open at all times, but I didn't have the energy to go there. Instead, I called her on my scroll. Though the audio came out just fine, the video link between the two of us was choppy and a little distorted; the distance between my remote home nestled “between Nowhere and Never-Heard-Of-It” (as daddy loved to call it) and Beacon aside, my house had devices that made it extremely difficult for all but the most powerful telecommunications devices to transmit to them, let alone have it be of good enough quality to be presented professionally.

It didn't take crystal clear visuals to see that my mother was absolutely, positively not prepared for this call, though.

“Coco!” She cried, forcing a smile on her face and willing the panic away. “You called! I mean, of course you would, I did ask you to, didn't I…?” She chuckled nervously.

I forced my own little smile and nodded. “Yes, you did. Now, I'm assuming you wanted to talk to me about something?”

Mother's ears flattened. I could see her furiously debating continuing or making up some lame excuse in the privacy of her own mind. I waited patiently, my food untouched and my coffee idly sipped.

“So, your father told me, about, well, you know...” She paused again. “Is it safe to say it...?” She asked.

I looked around. As earlier, no one gave me the slightest care, too tired or too focused on their food or work to even overhear me, let alone listen in. “It is.” I said as I turned back to her.

“She told me that you have a crush on your teammate—Velvet, was it?”

I closed my eyes and sighed. “Yes, that is her name, and I'm telling you I most definitely do _not_ have a crush on her. Despite what daddy says, we are _strictly_ friends, and I still intend to never fall in love ever again.”

Mother nodded, though her worries looked far from put to rest. “Yes, yes, Saphi is always saying things like that...” She chuckled awkwardly.

“Mhmm.” I replied.

An awkward silence fell between the two of us. “… Do you, you know, want to talk about it…?” Mother smiled hopefully.

I winced. “I'm sorry, mother, nothing against you, but I'd really rather not...”

Mother looked pained, but she quickly forced that fake, happy expression back on her face. “Okay, Coco. I understand.”

“Thank you, mother.” I said.

Another awkward silence. Steam slowly rose up from my coffee mug.

“Coco...?” Mother said.

“Yes?”

“… It's a shame Beacon is so far away from here, you know...? If you were closer, we could, I don't know, hang out in your old room, maybe have a sleepover, and then you could tell me all about, well, pretty much everything you want tell me right, right?” She smiled, that tiny turn of her lips filled with so much hope.

I nodded. “Yeah, we could.” I smiled back.

The corners of her mouth quickly turned up, before shrinking again. “Well, I'll just leave you to breakfast now and go back to work, I suppose. Goodbye, Coco. I love you, and always will—no matter what happens.”

“I love you too, mother.” I said.

I shut off the feed before I could see her tear up.

My mother tried, she really did. Unfortunately, I needed much more than that to get through this.


	17. Notice of Hiatus, Offer for Other Authors to Continue the Series

RL, my stores of motivation, and the direction RWBY the canon series is going has drained me of my interest in writing more Preying On You Tonight, and sadly, Crosshares in general. In following with a new philosophy, it’s either the one WIP or nothing, no putting anything back into the “In” plate to be worked on later, and I just have to admit, even if I have the ending down and many of the future chapters in my head, I just can’t make the ends meet.

I’m free for submitting the raw file with all the scrapped content and slightly unedited writing I’ve already done for Preying. Also included are notes as to how I originally intended it to happen, along with characters that have yet to appear, and answers to important questions like why exactly Coco has forsaken love so early in life.

I will be open to questions and suggestions about how to continue, should anyone choose to accept.

I’m really sorry to all fans and those readers still watching and waiting for the next update.

I just can’t do it, and like the old saying goes, it’s time to set it free and hope for the best.

I have uploaded onto Google Docs most of the writing that has yet to be published, along with the ending. Feel free to check them out here: https://drive.google.com/folderview?id=0B8T_bmrRhvqyNy1nRDhBX0t2dUk&usp=sharing


End file.
